To Hell in a Handbasket
by Kathryn's NomDePlume
Summary: Twilight as I would have written it. Darker humour. AU. Edward isn't a vegetarian.
1. To Hell in a Handbasket

_**Author's Note: To all those who read EOM, this is not a concentrated effort, don't expect great things from this. It really was just written to pass the time in an unoccupied hour. Maybe now you all will be believe that I can't actually write.**_

**In a Handbasket**

_**Chapter One**_

'_Damn Stephenie Meye_r_!_' Edward thought furiously. Ever since her turnip of a book had been published, girls started looking at him differently. Instead of a mixture of aesthetic appreciation and healthy fear with which they usually regarded him, now they were doe eyed, and their thoughts repulsively romantic. Instead of keeping their distance, they would get close to him, flip their hair in his direction, hoping that her scent would be 'the one.' Of course, they weren't certain that he was a vampire, but that stupid book had filled their heads with romantic notions.

_Who in their right mind would think a vampire is romantic?_ It was so far fetched, he knew Meyer was a human. Had to be. No vampire would ever think up something so ridiculous. To make matters worse, he shared his name with the hero, and even answered to his description. It was as if the woman purposefully wrote the slander to ruin his life. Existence, rather.

He could tell in all their thoughts that they never shared their secret suspicions with their friends, they wanted to snare him themselves. The worst thing was, he couldn't even eat them without raising suspicion. And oh he'd been sorely tempted. They made it so easy on him. They actually _tried_ to arrange to be alone with him. They assumed he was a 'vegetarian'. There was no such thing. But he _did_ try to blend in, and he knew that if a single person at his school were to vanish, suspicion would immediately fall on him. Similarly, were he to simply leave now, suspicions would also be raised. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. Actually he'd had that particular handbasket reserved for over a century.

"Hi Edward," one of the girls greeted. He heard her friends' thoughts, hoping she wouldn't be successful. The girl herself was going over the lines she had rehearsed earlier that day in front of the mirror in the girls' bathroom.

"Hmm." That was as close to a greeting as he could muster.

'_I hope his eyes are brown today, oh wait, what if he actually_can_hear what I'm thinking?—'_

He rolled his eyes, which were _always_ brown. They never changed colour. Yet for some reason, this chit of a girl thought that he'd be safer that way.

'_Oh well, just do it!'_ she encouraged herself. Meanwhile he was thinking of getting black contact lenses. Maybe that would keep them away. No, that would only raise more suspicions.

"Would you like to sit at our table?" she offered.

"Thank you, but I've already finished," he said, grabbing his tray and getting up to leave.

"Maybe tomorrow?"

"Maybe."

This was exhausting. Wasn't there a single girl in the room who hadn't read that book which was the bane of his existence? He could tell by their thoughts that most of the guys hadn't, but that didn't stop them from disliking him. They never had before, they considered him a freak, which granted, he was, but their animosity rose with his popularity with the girls. There was no escape. He'd have to stick it out till graduation. Then he'd leave to a country whose language that damned novel hadn't been translated into.

His only sanctuary at that school was in empty classrooms, or in his biology teacher's office. The man had clearly never read the acursed novel, and his thoughts were almost always thankfully on botany. In fact, he had grown quite used having Edward in his office.

They hardly ever spoke. Mr. Banner left him to his business, and Edward left Mr. Banner to his. When he entered the office his teacher merely thought, '_Hiding away again, poor boy,_' before his thoughts were once again enveloped in the fascinating world of apoptosis. Or rather, the abysmal world of grading tests on the subject. It was all the same to Edward. The repetitiveness of his teacher's mind as he graded each test was easy to tune out.

It helped that Banner wasn't at all appealing. In fact, the man reeked. He'd never smelled more rotten, un-tempting blood before. Mr. Banner was easily his favourite human.

But he'd need to hunt soon if he wanted to contain his temper. How badly he just wanted to give those insipid females what they deserved, being hungry didn't help. He worked full time night shifts (for what else was he supposed to do) as a security guard the next town over. Perhaps he'd grab a snack on the way.

All too soon, the bell rang and he was forced out into the monotony again. He trudged into English, and nearly recoiled with the onslaught of bitter sentiments radiating from most every girl in the room. They always did that. It was like a ritual. Every day they'd rush in a try to get the seat next to his. He sat in the very back row next to the window. So the last row second seat from the window was the prize they all fought for every day. It was like that with every class. If he were a vain sort of fellow this would have amused him immensely. He wondered if there was some way to_become_ vain. It would make his days ever so much more agreeable if he could enjoy all the attention.

Today the lucky winner was Emily. The other girls had to find consolation in the desks that were next nearest his, farther down the row or in the row in front of his. The girl herself looked rather smug.

"Congratulations," he told her sarcastically. Her triumphant expression fell into mortification at being caught in her scheme. Honestly, did they think he didn't notice how the jockeyed for positions near him?

'_Oh my god, he's making fun of me. Just... try to act cool, pretend like you don't know what he's talking about.'_

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said unconvincingly, and sat down next to him.

He smirked. Apparently there was some amusement to be had after all. Pointing out to fan girls how ridiculous they are was not only fun for him, but was doing them a favour. He was making the world a better place.

He snorted darkly at that. The thought of _him_ making the world a better place was laughable. Vampires as a force of good in any capacity was a joke. How wrong the woman had it. His kind weren't pretty, in fact, Edward had seen quite a few ugly vampires in his day. He just didn't happen to be one of them. If he were ugly, perhaps women wouldn't plague him so. It takes the fun out of the hunt when your prey jumps willingly into your arms.

That's why unless he was in a particular hurry, he'd always hunt men. They put up a better fight.

The class began and they continued their discussion of Hamlet. A quarter of an hour into the lesson there was a hesitant knock on the door and a girl meekly entered.

'_I don't care if it's the right room or not, I'm tired of looking. I'll just sit here and_pretend_it's English class.'_

"Mr. Matthews' junior year English?" she asked.

"That's it. I've been told you were coming. Go ahead and take your seat."

'_Good, I'd planned to anyway. Back looks incredibly crowded. Is this class that bad?_' she wondered. She sat in the very front row next to the window. He tried to catch her scent through the room but he couldn't through all the others. It was only an idle curiosity anyway. The new was always more interesting than the old wares. She didn't have a copy of the play with her so one of the boys moved over to share his. '_Here's one Edward hasn't got to yet,_' the boy thought. Apparently even humans appreciated the concept of fresh meat.

He turned his attention back to the window.

'_Just look over at me, just notice me. I put so much thought into what I wore this morning...'_

_Should put some more thought into your thoughts,_ he retorted in his own mind. _Vapid as they currently are._

'_Nails are chipping again, I'll have to redo them.'_

'_Tomorrow I'll skip lunch. Win-win. Less calories and I'll definitely make it here first.'_

He moved his mental ear over to the male side of the room. Some of them were actually paying attention... sort of.

'_What the hell is a bodkin? A bare bodkin? Is that like body? Is he naked?'_

_Actually it's a bare blade, with which one can kill oneself... unless one is a vampire in which case it would take a bit more doing,_he thought morosely. He wondered how he could go about ending it all. It wouldn't be easy. But really, what was the point in continuing to exist? He had no raison d'être. He lived alone, he had no friends, he hadn't had a genuine conversation in over a decade. Really, what was the point?

_Ah, you say that now Ed, but you'll be thinking differently tonight when you're on the hunt._

True, it was a high every time. He, like most of his kind, lived for the hunt. That was the point. To kill. They reveled in it. That was his trouble; he didn't take time to appreciate the better parts of existence. He needed a hobby to divert him in between hunts, but what?

'_She's actually paying attention,'_ the teacher's enthused thoughts permeated into his own and he saw through the man's eyes the face of the new girl. Edward searched her unfamiliar mind and found that it was true. She was completely engaged in the lesson. No, no wait, not entirely.

'_Conscience does make cowards of us all... was suicide really the right answer? Was it cowardly to bow out? Or was he taking action against the world by ending it? No, there is a way to fix nearly every problem. Death is the only irreversible problem, and she never had to deal with a loss. She just inflicted that on me.'_

_Sorry teach, she's just as gone as the rest of them,_ Edward thought. Although her thoughts were related to the class, they were definitely not there. He had thought at first she was paying attention, but the consistent use of past tense, and he soon learned that the 'he' in her mind wasn't Hamlet. Whosever face it was kept flashing through her mind.

_Poker_, he thought. That would be his new hobby. He'd make money doing that, give him something more amusing to do other than his job. That was one way the 'other' Edward was enviable. He had conveniently rich foster parents to pay for anything his un-beating heart desired. He, on the other hand, had to work for him money, clothes, car, apartment. Granted never sleeping and never being tired helped with the full time job. And he didn't have to spend money on food...

He chuckled to himself.

'_I wonder what he's laughing about. I wish I could make him smile like that. He's even more handsome when he smiles...'_

His grin immediately vanished. Would it be that detrimental to kill just one? Would anyone notice? No, they definitely would. No deaths or disappearances in his own town. Fouling one's own nest, and all that...

He decided to run to work that night. He was glad he did, not for the joy in the exercise itself, but he made the most gratifying kill. He would have missed the man all together had he taken his car.

He showed up to work, completely buzzed. He saw Sam ready for his shift to end. Exhilarated, Edward contemplated taking Sam out too, he couldn't stop smiling at the idea. But no, if a co-worker died, he'd be questioned, and he didn't want to get caught up in that. _Lucky you, Sam_, he thought.

Edward clocked in and Sam clocked out, _the changing of the guards_, he had humourlessly called it.

He sat in the room with the security televisions, tapping his foot impatiently. 8 hours of this, and yet he was twitching from his fresh feed.

He came down from the high after two hours, where he fell into monotony again. Homework took naught but half an hour, the rest of the time he sat there, a century of thoughts and memories floating around abstracting in his mind, trying to think of a raison d'être.

The next day at school his mental scans weren't idle as they usually had been. He actively searched as many people as he could, unfortunately people didn't seem to go around focusing on what made life worth living.

Unless sex, petty squabbles with friends and family, and his humble self made life worth living, for it was those thoughts that seemed to predominate among the student body. Pity he couldn't look deeper into the mind, only the shallow scrapings off the top, what people were thinking at that very moment. He took his seat in second period biology. He wasn't surprised that the one next to him was already taken. It seemed that Amanda had won that day. It was a pity that the more mentally tolerable females didn't fight to sit next to him. It was always the most annoying that were so insistent. The meeker souls didn't have the courage, or rather, weren't willing to make fools of themselves. Didn't stop them from sighing longingly in his direction. No, they'd probably be just as bad if they were in the hot seat. What active imaginations women had. If men truly knew what expectations women had of them... they'd turn gay out of fear and revulsion.

Luckily for the continuation of the human race, only he was plagued with the gift. There was no greater turn-off, then knowing the entire truth. No mystery involved, no chance of deluding oneself with fantasies of what the person could be, rather than what they are. No. He saw everything, the ugliness of the mind that everyone fought to keep to themselves. Fake, the lot of them. The images they put out were almost always untrue to who they were underneath.

_What a hypocrite I am_, he thought amusedly. He was putting on a show as well to gain his own ends. He was the biggest pretender of them all, he supposed it was unfair for him to judge.

He continued mentally eavesdropping, sifting through his classmates' thoughts. They were all old, like re-runs of a television program. The same preoccupations, the same desires, the same half-focus on what the teacher was saying. The only thing new came from the pair at the front row desk.

_She has nice handwriting, it suits her, elegant, graceful. 'I'm Wyatt,'_ he whispered in introduction.

"Izzy," she replied shaking the boys hand a bit nervously.

'_Izzy? Weird name.'_

'_He thinks it's a weird name too, I can see it on his face. You aren't fooling anyone, Bella."_

"Short of Isabella," she explained.

"Oh, right. I wondered. So do you want to go first or should I?"

"You go ahead," she told him. _'I've done already done this lab anyway._

Edward then remembered his own partner and that he had his own lab to do. "Ladies first," he told her, then went back to listening into the other conversation across the room.

'_Gorgeous, nice hair, great body. Wonder what she thinks of me,'_ thought her lab partner. To Edward's amusement, the girl's thoughts weren't along those lines at all.

'_He misspelled mitochondria. Are we graded individually or together? Could I get a new lab partner? Damn it, did I forget to turn off the heating before I left. That's twice this week, the bill will be monstrous. I could dip into savings or I could try to work another shift—No, he's got it wrong again.'_

"Nope," she told him, smiling charmingly from Wyatt's point of view. "Try again."

'_Is she teasing me? Cute smile, oh, crap, yeah that_is_wrong.'_

Edward absentmindedly scribbled the correct answer on his own page.

"So why did you transfer here of all places?"

'_I had no choice.'_ "It's a custody thing." _Living on my own now I can't afford my old school.'_

"Ah. My parents are divorced too," he told her. _'I understand how she feels, I had to move too._ _I was the new kid once. I can use that to my advantage._ "Since you're new to the area I could show you around. Granted, there isn't much to see."

"Oh, I've been here before." '_I spent two weeks here every summer, and moved here in September.'_

"Oh." _'Shot down, ouch.'_

They went back to working on the lab in silence. Edward answered the rest of his questions and pushed it over to the girl to copy if she wanted, he was tired of her trying to get his attention.

'_Ha. Thompson was rejected. Good. I'll ask her to lunch.'_

O'Malley was unaware that most of the other males in the room were thinking similar things. It looked as if this Isabella was desirable simply because she wasn't interested in him... yet._It's only a matter of time,_ he thought sadly. Perhaps he'd avoid her entirely. So long as she was unaware of him she wouldn't fall for him. Her thoughts would be more worth listening to.

He had gathered his things and was halfway to the door before the bell stopped ringing for lunch.

'_Freak_.'

'_Damn it I was going to ask him to sit with me at lunch.'_

'_Ha. Someone who is actually more eager than I am to get out of here.'_Isabella thought. Edward smirked to himself.

He decided to avoid the lunchroom today, appearances be damned. He didn't feel up to the cafeteria of giggling girls and frustrated boys, and the ridiculous inner workings of their bitter minds.

"Edward?" Curse it, he'd been followed out.

"What?"

"I was wondering..." '_Oh my god, why did I come out here? He's going to think I'm stupid.'_

_Already do, no worries._

"Yes?"

"It's just, you look so upset. I was wondering if you are alright." _'Just be understanding. Give him a chance to open up and he'll see how good I am for him.'_

"I'm fine," he told her impatiently. Her face fell. She was thinking , _but I understand you._

_Like hell you do._

"I've noticed, you know. You're... different."

"Oh?"

"Your... your skin is pale white, you never go out into the sun..."

_Was that a direct quote from the book? Could have been._"So?"

"Well..." _Oh god, I can't actually say it._

"Elizabeth...." he began, annoyed. _'Ohmygod, he knows my name.'_ "I have a skin condition. I can't go out into the sun without getting severe sunburn." That much was entirely true. He didn't 'sparkle like diamonds. Going out into the sunlight _hurt_. It was just about the only thing that did. "So yes, I am pale. Thank you very kindly for pointing that out."

Maybe she'd tell all her friends that. Maybe they'd leave him alone.

'_Okay, that might be true, but isn't that what a vampire__**would**__say?'_

Edward suppressed the exasperated growl that wanted to rumble in his throat and scare her away.

"Could you answer me one question?" he asked.

"Anything," she said immediately.

"Do you think you're the first person to approach me with those observations? You think you're the only one who thinks they have me figured out because they read some two-bit romance novel? Do you honestly think I'm a vampire? Just because I'm pale? Are you really that stupid?"

The girl burst into tears and ran away. He shouldn't have insulted her, he had let his annoyance run away with him. But as he listened to her humiliated thoughts as she fled; at least he had convinced her that he wasn't a vampire.

'_I'm so humiliated, he'll tell everyone how stupid I am. God, of course there's no such thing as vampires, what was I thinking? Why did I say that?'_

Too bad she wouldn't tell all of her friends what he'd said, she'd be too embarrassed. Would he have to repeat this whole hideous performance with every girl in the school? Perhaps he ought to walk out into the sunlight where many people could see him. Just for a minute, just to show them he didn't sparkle. It would be worth the pain.

Still, he couldn't help but continue listening in the vain hope that she might share her experience with others, that the word would spread, that maybe people would leave him alone._Damn Stephenie Meyer._

Unfortunately the girl didn't go to the cafeteria to blurt out a public confession, but headed directly for the bathroom. For the first time, Edward allowed him mind to follow inside. The image of the new girl Isabella flashed by on her way to lock herself in the stall.

'_Stupid stupid stupid. How can I face him? He'll tell everyone and then the whole school will know. My life is over.'_

'_I don't even know her, but she looks upset. Is she alright? Should I ask what's wrong?'_

"Um... are you alright?" she asked uncertainly.

'_No, go away, leave me alone with my humiliation.'_

"Do you need help? I could get someone..."

'_She just won't give up, will she?'_"No, I'm fine."

'_Yes, because I lock myself in the bathroom and ball my eyes out when I'm fine.'_"Are you sure?"

'_Just stop crying, wipe your face, show that you're okay.'_ She opened the door the stall, still hiccoughing slightly, trails in her face from where the tears ruined her makeup.

'_Poor thing...'_ Isabella smiled at her, trying to cheer up a girl she didn't even know. "What's wrong?"

'_She doesn't know me or Edward. Besides, she'll find out soon enough if he goes off telling everyone.'_"I made a fool of myself in front of someone."

"I'm sure it's not so bad."

"No, it is. I made a stupid assumption, something so terrible, so... so _stupid_. I read too many stupid books and my imagination ran away with me and now he'll hate me now and tell everyone."

'_Like Catherine Morland in__Northanger Abbey__.'_ Isabella thought. Edward smirked. She liked the classics. "I'm sure you can fix it. If you talk to him, apologize."

"I can't talk to him after that!" she said, scandalized.

"Ignoring him and hiding in bathrooms will only make it worse, trust me. Just apologize, and try to laugh it off. It'll be forgotten in no time."

"How can I face him again?"

"Were you really close?" she asked sympathetically. _'He'll forgive her if he cares.'_

"Erm... well... no, not really." '_I wish I was. I wonder what it would be like to be loved by Edward._

Edward briefly wondered that too.

"Just talk to him anyway. He'll be reasonable about it. This sort of thing happens all the time. It's not the end of the world, I promise." She gave another one of those encouraging smiles._'She probably liked him. Even if the guy doesn't forgive her, there are other fish in the sea. It's not as if her friends and family will abandon her. She still has what's important._

Why didn't she say that last bit aloud? It seemed to be the most important part and yet she left it out.

"I'm Beth, by the way."

"Iz." _'Will that ever sound normal to me?'_

"Iz?" '_Iz?'_

"It's just what they call me." _'New life, new name. Get used to it, Bells.'_

"Nice to meet you, sorry about all this."

"It's no problem, really." _'It's nice to focus on__**other**__people's problems.'_

"Thanks. I should probably go find him." _'Before I lose my nerve.'_

"Good luck." _'I'm sure he'll forgive you. It couldn't really have been that bad.'_

Again, Edward wondered why she didn't say that aloud. She seemed to have a maturity most others lacked. How old was she? How did she come to sound like an adult in her mind? He was suddenly curious about her, but he couldn't get the answers he wanted unless she thought them. Unless it's their birthday, few people thought about their age, or why they came to be as mature as they are. The only way he'd get answers to his questions would be to ask her, which was of course, impossible.

_Hi, I was just listening into your thoughts the other day and I couldn't help but wonder..._

Right...

"Um... Edward?"

Elizabeth Wood had come back to make her apologies.

"Yes?"

"I'm... I'm sorry. It was stupid of me."

"No, I acted badly. I apologize, I shouldn't have insulted you."

"I deserved it."

"No, I over reacted. Don't feel bad. You are not the first girl to do that and unfortunately I doubt you'll be the last." He gave her a rueful grin.

'_That_does_make me feel better. I wonder who else did it. I bet Kacy did. Probably Anna too.'_

She chuckled awkwardly and waved bye, running off to use what remained of the lunch hour to eat and talk with her friends as Edward turned in the direction of his English class.

_One down, 314 to go,_ he thought. Still, he'd have the chance to drop in on Isabella's thoughts during English. To his surprise, she was already there. Did she not go to lunch? Why not?

'_Ugh,'_she thought when she saw him and immediately turned away. Well _that_ was a new one. It was almost... refreshing? _'Here comes another one. I just wanted some peace and quiet. Honestly, they act as if I'm the only girl in this school.'_

That's right, he'd heard the thoughts himself. They had all planned on making their move at lunch time. He could see through her mind the assault she had suffered through in the cafeteria, several different guys trying to get her to sit with them, to pay for her lunch, to talk to her. She'd felt overwhelmed, annoyed, and even slightly afraid. Edward could understand that. That was what he went through every day.

He felt he ought to apologize to her. It was because all the women were after him that she seemed to be the only girl available for the other guys. But from the resentment directed towards his sex that was radiating from her, he decided now was not the best time to strike up a conversation. She'd take it the wrong way.

He took his seat in the very back next to the window. He needed to be near a clean air supply when surrounded by humans. Still, with no one else in the room he could smell her perfectly._Nice_, he thought. _Very appealing._ But not enough to tempt him into making things difficult for himself.

He pulled out a book to pretend to read as he eavesdropped. Unfortunately her mind was focused on the novel she was reading. He'd read that one, in fact he'd read a lot of books. In his life he had a lot of spare time. Books filled it up nicely. He wondered if she would enjoy The Kite Runner, what she would think about it. Come to think of it, what music did she like? What did she do in her spare time? He'd find out eventually. One of the boys was bound to ask her and he'd hear her answers.

Mary-Anne sped into the room thinking triumphant thoughts but stopped immediately when she saw him already there.

'_What do I do. Can I sit next to him when there's no one else here? Will he think that's weird? Should I try to talk to him? But he's reading... he be annoyed if I interrupt?'_

To save both of them any anguish, he got up and left, leaving his things in his seat, pretending he needed that bathroom. He didn't, of course. His body didn't work that way, but he made frequent trips there throughout the day to keep up appearances. He left his mental ears in the classroom though, in case Mary-Anne said anything to Isabella.

She didn't. But she did get into an argument with her best friend about her getting to sit next to him twice in the same week. Other girls joined a moment later, put out that they were too late, yet again.

'_Is sitting in the back really that important?'_ thought Isabella. He was grateful none of the girls had mentioned his name. They seemed embarrassed to admit aloud. So much the better, the new girl wouldn't think to notice him. Not that she'd have much time to. She was besieged by a fresh wave of eager males. _'Do people actually find me more attractive here? No, that's nonsense. There must be some kind of bet, who can get the new girl. Good luck with that one, boys,'_she thought sarcastically.

"_I'll be right back, just going to the bathroom before class,"_ she excused herself. _'I don't even know where they are. I'll just wander around until the bell rings. Maybe I'll sit outside. No, I don't want to get my book wet. I'll have to leave it here.'_

He followed her thoughts out the door, down the hall, out the main doors, down the steps and to a table where no one was sitting due to the rain. She pulled up her hood and sat._'Where's Jake when you need him,'_ she thought wistfully. _'Too bad I'm not part of the tribe; I could go to school on reservation too. At least I'd know people.'_Her thoughts changed into a series of happier scenes from her past tainted with the typical nostalgia of older people who have already outlived their youth. It was out of place in a girl so young.

He left the relative protection of the bathroom to return to usual, he did his best to tune out the thoughts of those around him, but to do so entirely was impossible. He might be able to blur the actual words, but the resentment, hate, lust, and hope was as inescapable as it was unmistakable.

He tried to be as polite as possible to the girls who attempted conversation, but he didn't want to encourage them, answering as succinctly as possible.

The first bell rang and a minute later Isabella walked in the door. She cast a cursory glance about the room and for the first time she met his eyes. She looked away quickly though, and he thought he read a small smirk in the corner of her lips.

'_Poor guy looks as miserable as I feel.'_ He then saw an image of himself sitting back perfectly straight, but leaning slightly towards the wall, as if in attempt to put distance between himself and those next to him. He realized that he did, indeed, sit that way and tried to relax into a more humanoid posture. _'But the mystery of the crowded back row is solved. All I need is a mustache and a Belgian accent and I could be Hercule Poirot.'_ She snorted to herself, looking back to her female classmates shaking her head. '_More like Nancy Drew,'_ she thought drily.

Edward found her literary scope amusing. She seemed to reference real life with literature. The teacher walked in, pleased to see that Isabella was once again sitting in the front willing to pay attention, and that her presence had brought forth a few other students to the front row as well. He doubted their motives, and rightly so.

They read aloud that day, so most people were forced to follow along so as to not miss their own cues.

Witch shrewd logic, Mr. Mathews assigned Edward the role of Hamlet, assuming (correctly) that the girls would be more inclined to pay attention if he were often speaking. Several were eager to then volunteer for the role of Ophelia. Isabella ended up playing Polonius, whom Hamlet misguidedly murders.

She, Isabella that is, seemed nervous when she had to read her lines. She stumbled over a few in the beginning. '_Way to go, Bella. People will think I'm illiterate.'_

Edward, who had spent a shameful amount of recent time in her head, knew the absurdity in her being unable to read.

.

The following fortnight was spent in the same manner, him avoiding actual interaction with her, but spying on her from other people's eyes. He tried to give her privacy, when he thought about it, but he didn't often remember. He had found out where she worked, but had resisted going there to 'run into' her as if by happenstance rather than design. Once he found her entranced in a book he had somehow not yet read, which he bought and read that evening just to understand her a bit more She was always thinking about things, and more often than not it was relatively interesting. Edward, who knew his classmates well enough after 2 years of being forced to hear their every thought, found it oddly fascinating to see this world through the eyes of a newcomer. Her silent observations were more often than not alarmingly accurate, and she couldn't even read minds. She was just unnaturally perceptive, empathetic. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, she maintained a distance from her peers. She reminded him of himself; in close quarters with everyone else, but mentally miles away, or at least wishing to be. For this he felt closer to her, even though he had never spoken a word to her, and she hadn't given him much thought since that day in English two weeks previous. He would know, he checked often enough.

Strange, he had meant to pick up poker as his new hobby and somehow it had turned into mentally stalking Bella instead. For that's how she called herself in her own mind. He'd gotten used to that appellation, rather than the one she insisted other people use.

And no, the irony that her name was Isabella wasn't lost on him. It was just another one of those disgusting coincidences he refused to acknowledge. He could only be grateful that the other superstitious students knew her only as Iz or Izzy. When he thought about it the nickname seemed entirely inappropriate, too frivolous for such a serious soul.

'_Back off Cullen, she's mine,'_ someone thought possessively, bringing him out of his thoughts. Beau Jackson was given him a death glare. _'He has every girl in the school after him and he's going after Iz? He's just doing it to be a prick. Show off.'_

Edward was ashamed of himself for having been outwardly staring. He used to be more subtle, but she was just three tables down in the cafeteria, directly in his sights. He couldn't help it. He'd been so focused on her thoughts the others had been mostly drowned out. Now that he was paying attention he heard girls wishing evil fates to befall Bella.

'_Bitch,'_ they said unrepentantly. _'What does she have that I don't? She's not that attractive, why does he keep staring at her?'_

_She has a mind worth being in, for one,_ he silently answered.

'_She should go back to that private school she came from,'_thought another girl. _'She thinks she's special just because she's new.'_

Edward knew she thought no such thing. She wasn't oblivious to the disapproving stares, just confused by them. She didn't understand why this week, people suddenly disliked her when last week they didn't seem to mind. She took it personally, and once more Edward felt the need to apologize. Again, it was his fault. He hadn't even introduced himself, he couldn't very well say sorry for an offence he couldn't even admit to.

He wanted to do something, stand up for her, protect her from the malevolent thoughts of catty girls who had no defendable reason to dislike her. But how? He hadn't truly interacted with humans in years. Not only that but his interference would seem entirely uncalled for to everyone else. What would he accuse them of, thinking mean things?

Annoyed by his impotence to do anything to defend her, he got up, tossed his uneaten food into the trash and stormed out of the room, furiously ignoring the confused thoughts he left behind him. Unwilling to go to English, where he knew a fan girl would be sitting in wait to ambush him, he went to sit on the bench outside which Bella frequently used before class. It wasn't raining that day, but still overcast enough to ease any worries he might have had.

He put his headphones and listened to calming music, it always helped him block out other thoughts if he could concentrate hard enough on the peaceful tune. _Clair de Lune_ was a personal favourite of his.

For some reason, he was surprised when Bella appeared, clearly heading for her usual table. She was disappointed to see it already taken. Upset, she turned around to go.

"Wait," he called out to her. She stopped and turned around curiously. _'Was he talking to me?'_

He felt bad for taking her spot. For it was hers, in both their minds. "You can have it. I'll find someplace else."

Before she could say anything (knowing her she would insist he stay, despite his blatant theft) he got up and strode purposefully away. Planning to sit himself under a tree 20 yards off.

In her thoughts he saw himself stalk away. _'Kind of him,'_ she thought. _'Odd, but kind. I can imagine why he wants to get away too. English class would try anyone's patience.'_

She opened her book and read, her thoughts moving away from him and onto the characters. He noticed that this disappointed him slightly. She was so understanding of others, yet she made no attempt to understand him. He found himself wishing she'd try.

When the first bell rang, she thought, _'One more page to finish the chapter, then I'll go in,'_ and picked up the pace of her reading. He made it back to the classroom before her therefore, and took his usual seat. When she came in a minute later he caught her eye. She gave him a quick embarrassed smile, thinking but not saying a very genuine, '_Thank you_,' before turning away, which elicited several bad names to be mentally hurled at her from across the room accompanied by aggravated male grumbling along the lines of _'Damn it, Cullen finally got to her._' This wasn't true, of course, but that didn't stop Edward from smiling at the thought.


	2. By the Pricking of my Thumb

_**A/N: Yes, I **_**did**_** steal things from Twilight and Midnight Sun. But, tis fanfiction afterall. **_

_Chapter 2: By the Pricking of my Thumb_

Another two weeks passed and he still avoided speaking to her. She didn't make an effort either, which, he was ashamed to admit even to himself, bothered him slightly. Rain or... well, not shine, but rain or no rain, he spent the second half of every lunch period under that same tree and she at the bench.

He liked to think that they were cultivating a sort of silent camaraderie, that this was their routine, an unspoken arrangement. Granted they never exchanged a single word and they were 20 yards away most of the time, but he knew from her mind that she had come to expect him to be there. That was something, at any rate. She wasn't overly pleased with his presence, nor was she resentful, which put him ahead of most the other males at the school, to whom she had remained implacably indifferent. At least she accepted his silent presence.

It had been a month since she first arrived when one day they heading back to class after the bell had rung and he had held the door open for her, something he had made a point of doing that week. Today was no different, she'd give him a shy smile in gratitude (yet she politely said thank you in her mind every time) and today they'd even walked down the hall side by side as they approached the classroom door.

He was disgusted with how similar his behaviour was to those of his fan girls, reading into each little moment they spent together.

Unable to resist seeing that grin again, he opened the door to the classroom for her, and as usual she smiled her thanks before taking her seat. It was only when he heard the unvoiced outraged protests from both sexes that he realized he had been smiling back. She appeared to be the only one in the room (apart from himself) who had missed it.

The next day he received the same smile, but a new thought. _'Always the gentleman.'_ Again, in a thankful tone of voice. It was like a treat she'd given him, and she wasn't even aware of it.

She took her habitual seat and he took his. Today they were reading Romeo and Juliet aloud. In keeping with Mr. Thompson's strategy, Edward was Romeo. Bella, though she'd rather not have any reading part at all, accepted the role of Paris...

Whom Romeo kills in a fit of passion.

Again, he was cast as her murder. If Edward were of an irrational nature, he would have seen a pattern forming and been unnerved. Instead, he simply believed that his unease sprung from Bella's discomfort at being forced to read in front of the class.

A week later in Biology, he had accidentally strayed into her head again, curious as to what she and her current lab partner were discussing. She was laughing politely at something he'd said.

'_She's into me. She wouldn't have asked to be my lab partner if she didn't.' _Edward reluctantly admitted that Kevin had a point.

"So Iz, I was wondering if you wanted to catch a movie this weekend or something."

_Oh, very smooth approach,_ Edward thought crassly. _Did he put any effort into it at all? Or was he aiming to be underwhelming..._

"I'm not supposed to date until I'm 18," she told them. "My dad's rules." _'At least they had been when he was alive. No reason to discard them just because he's dead. _

These melancholy thoughts she had from time to time always had a sobering effect on Edward. He respectfully retreated from her mind, eavesdropping solely with his physical ears.

"Oh."

It was silent for a while at their end of the room, and Edward politely responded to Jacqueline.

"So when is your birthday then?" Kevin's voice seemed to zing across the room into his eardrum. Unconsciously he jumped back into their minds.

"Um..." _'No point in lying, I guess. It's six months away. Perhaps he'll have forgotten by next year. _"September 13th."

That was something he hadn't known before either.

'_Of course, bad-luck Bella _would_ be born on Friday the 13__th__.'_

Bad Luck Bella? Did she have a reputation of being unlucky? Again, this was something he could only wonder about.

She laughed playfully, trying to put both of them back into a good mood. "Maybe next year, right?"

Kevin smiled back. "Right." _'At least it wasn't a total rejection.'_

'_She can't date till next year?'_

'_Does that include prom?'_

'_That's totally just an excuse, she just doesn't want him.'_

Edward was annoyed at his classmates' nosiness, but seeing as he was the biggest eavesdropper of them all, he bit back his resentful sentiments.

'_How much longer till the bell?' _she thought desperately. Attention always made her nervous, he'd noticed. She looked at her watch as she tapped her foot nervously. _'Two minutes. Maybe this time I'll actually beat the Flash out of the room.'_ Her mental comment was tinted with amusement as the memories of him darting out the door before everyone else day after day played in her mind.

That hint of fondness elated him. When the bell sounded the end of the lesson they both bolted to the door. He, being the gentleman, let her pass by first. _'So chivalry _isn't_ dead,'_ she thought sarcastically as she escaped into the hallway. She didn't even look back to see him, but she thought, _'He let me win, it doesn't count.'_

He cast a perfunctory look about the cafeteria, knowing from his mind's eye that Bella hadn't stayed; he turned back around and went outside. She sat there as she always did, with an apple and a small box of milk. She had a book lying face down on the table next to her, he had no idea which one. She herself was listening to her own music as she ate. Schubert's _Gute Nacht._ One of his favourite pieces. He was pleased to know that they did have more than relative anti-social behaviour in common.

Feeling suddenly emboldened by this realization he went up to her. She stiffened at his approach, the normal healthy response any human should feel, he reminded himself. Her mind was oddly blank. Just a whir of curiosity. He picked up her book, inspecting it. It was a John Le Carré novel, taken from the local library. He smirked approvingly at her choice and continued to his accustomed place under the tree. Only after he was a good 20 feet away did she release the breath she'd been holding.

'_That's the best thing about him... He doesn't hover,' _she thought. Edward desperately wished she would clarify, but she didn't need to, she knew what she meant by that. It was only he who was left in the dark. Did she just appreciate that he kept his distance, or did she appreciate _him_ because he _knew_ to keep his distance? There was a clear line of distinction there, he knew it, he just didn't know on which side he fell. It was entirely frustrating.

Either way, keeping away seemed to be the only method of staying close. Not that he'd ever really try to be more. What was the point in getting close to a human after all? He'd been an utter fool these past few weeks and he resolved to forget about Isabella.

.

That night he went hunting. He drove far away, really wanting to make a night of it. With any luck it would make state news, that's how much fun he was planning to have. He took his time in choosing his prey. The temptation to go up and talk to him was intense, but it was bad form to play with one's food. Besides, if people saw them talking he might be suspected. No, he was patient. He waited outside in the dark, hidden, listening to what he was going to do, and when he was going to leave. It was more thrilling to do this downtown, with thousands of people about. More of a challenge. He'd singled him out by scent, the most delicious smelling human in the area. When the time came he pounced, but exercised incredible restraint in the careful way he handled him. He couldn't drink right there in the parking lot, he'd had to take him somewhere else. He was careful not to break a single bone of the fragile human body, and leave not a scratch. He wanted first blood to be from the initial bite. A casual cut would ruin the effect.

He moved with lightning speed, descending on the man and carrying him away, up the side of a tall building. The man was too shocked, and it had happened so quickly, he didn't even have time to scream... yet. Edward would wait for it. Until then he listened to the bustling city below, any one of the thousands that teamed there could be next. The thought excited him the way nothing else could. Then, he heard it; knew that his victim's mind had finally caught up with the situation and he raked oxygen down his throat into his lungs to yell. It never came of course. Halfway through the breath, while the air was still travelling, he took that first, euphoric bite. Warm blood gushed into his mouth along with the dying effort of the scream. He liked the gurgling sound it made. That's why he always waited.

.

He had made four kills, each one as exquisite as the last. The high it gave him lasted him through first period calculus. The fact that he was in a good mood didn't go unnoticed, his giddiness caused him to smile at all and sundry. He even winked at a few girls, what the hell, give them a thrill. All the while he was lost in his _own_ fantasy; he imagined eating them all, concocted manners to lure away and devour each and every one of them. Or maybe he'd take several at a time. He floated happily in the thought of his bloodbath. It could never happen, but a vampire can always dream...

'_It's nice to see him looking so cheerful. He always seems so...pensive, weighed down by his own thoughts.' _He recognized Bella's voice in his head. He almost whipped around to look at her, but such actions could give him away. It was the longest thing she'd ever thought about him. Again, her perceptions were almost entirely accurate. Except that he was weighed down by everyone else's thoughts too, but there was no way should could know that or even begin to imagine it was a possibility.

He wasn't weighed down today though. No, he was soaring above them all. Happy sanguine images floating through his head, lifting his spirits. Oh, to kill. He would take his time with Bella if he were going to kill her. She would be worth playing with first. She wasn't physically strong, so it would be the only pleasure he'd get from her. He'd make her trust him first. He'd actually have to talk to her, put her at ease around him. She wouldn't stiffen when he got too close. He would make her like him. He would make her lower all her defenses, welcome him into her personal space. She'd smile that sheepish smile, unknowing that she was inviting a killer...

He was devising ways to get her to trust and admire him when Mr. Banner walked into the room and Edward suddenly lost his appetite. Banner always affected him that way, his blood stank so. He could almost feel the resounding thud that was the plummeting fall of his high. He felt it dissipate with reluctance. Ah well, it was good while it lasted. He tried to replay his fantasies in his head that had kept him so entertained the hour previous, but now they only served to annoy and depress him, taunting him of something he could never have.

Taking Bella was the only one that didn't sting with Banner's pungency effectively fumigating the room of his thirst. He realized it was probably because he never actually got to the eating her part. He knew it must have been coming soon; he was just distracted before he got to that happy moment.

He was struck with an idea. That dream _could_ come true. The Bella project would take time, which was alright because he couldn't take her before graduation anyway. After that, either she would move away or he would. He'd be free to act as he wanted. His head reeled at the idea. He'd never taken so much time and effort with prey before, but it might be worth it. Give him something to do, a _justifiable_ reason for taking an interest in the girl and spending an inordinate amount of time contemplating her thoughts and desires. If it was for the sake of the kill, it was alright.

At lunch that day he scoured her mind even more thoroughly than ever he had but with no luck. Two more days of the same results, whether she was reading or not, left him frustrated. It was that Friday he realized why, and another piece of her personality puzzle fell into place. She used this time after lunch specifically _not_ to think. To lose herself in a book, or simply clear her head of all thoughts and just listen to music. This was her down time. Her relaxation time. Her Edward time, he couldn't help but adding hopefully. She expected him to be there, he could sense that. Did his presence add or detract from her respite? That would be his experiment next week.

He was content with the progress that he'd made, for it _was_ progress, achingly slow though it was. Every iota of information he learned about her could prove helpful in accomplishing his final goal. Of course, he could take her after graduation whether he had earned her trust or not, but that wasn't fair, not the point of the game. Where was the challenge in that?

He mentally peeked in on her throughout the weekend. He saw her at work, he saw her returning a book at the library, checking out another one, saw her doing her shopping at the grocery store, (and he carefully noted what kind of food she seemed to enjoy.) And despite his gentlemanly desire to give her _some_ privacy, he found himself watching her in her own home, cooking, cleaning, studying, listening to classic hits of the 1930s. He remembered those days and grinned, thinking that this 17 year old girl was just an old a soul (providing that he had one, which he doubted) as he was. She even wore an apron while she cooked. Her mind was on auto-pilot. She didn't actually need to think about cooking, she just did it, out of habit no doubt. This was a routine. The pleasant enough ambience was broken however when she abruptly started crying, with no more reason than she made too much food. Granted, he could understand not wanting things to go to waste, but wasn't that a bit of an over reaction? Wasn't she more sensible than that?

"You cook for one now, Bella. Get it into your head," she chided herself aloud through her tears, which she bitterly wiped away, silently cursing herself for weeping.

_Ah,_ he understood now. He knew that she conditioned herself not to think about it, anytime her mind started straying into the direction of her father's death she'd reign it right back again as if it were a disobedient horse. She didn't often give way to tears like this. He was overcome by the odd urge to comfort the girl.

Again, impossible. Not only was he actually miles away, but his sudden appearance would only startle her, put her on her guard. Not only that but she didn't _need_ him. She didn't need anyone to comfort her, for abruptly, her mind was wiped clear of thought as she took deep calming breaths. Never had he met-- no, met isn't the right word because they had never even been introduced-- but never had he come across a human so in control of their own thoughts, who kept herself so closely guarded.

Calm once again, she took the extra portion she'd made, wrapped it up, and put it away in the refrigerator to be eaten the next day.

.

The following Wednesday, Edward waited in the men's room after lunch, following Bella outside to her table through his mind's eye. She nibbled on her granola bar and drank from her milk, feeling anxious. Not the common emotion for her at these times. He allowed himself to hope. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to be able to pinpoint to source of her unease herself. If he had come to be a part of her afternoon relaxing ritual, she wasn't aware of it. Well, there was an easy way to know for sure.

He ambled out casually, heading for his tree 20 yards away. He watched himself through her eyes, heard her breathing ease, her mind relax. Her mind said nothing about him, merely sighed an _'ah.' _Not a very helpful sound. He'd rather her say _'Yes! At last Edward is here, now I feel safe and can go back to my lunchtime routine of which he plays an integral part.' _Of course she thought no such thing. It might have been simply her thinking something was different, off, and when she saw him, merely realized that it was his absence that was different. Perhaps once she had come to that conclusion she wouldn't have been bothered. Perhaps his presence wasn't actually required. He wanted to find out once and for all if she found solace in his company.

The sunshine the next day forced him to stay inside, so he'd have his answer, even if it was sooner than he'd planned on testing it out. He'd been sitting in Biology when the clouds broke, contrary to the weather forecast. Sitting by the window was necessary for him to keep his head, he needed to be by fresh air to keep his thirst at bay, but the seating arrangement occasionally backfired. Being by the window meant got the first and most direct hit of sun. When he felt the clouds break and a sliver of solar light burn into his skin it was all he could do to keep from jerking back away. It was three minutes until the bell so he just left early.

'_Well that's just cheating,'_ thought Bella amusedly. _'Winning the race before it even begins.'_ If it didn't feel as if his skin was roasting off his body he would have chuckled at her comment directed toward him. But he wasn't in the chuckling mood. He was first in the cafeteria, and seeing no one but the lunch lady around, he plunged his arm into the ice chest which kept the bottles of soda offered cool. Ah, relief. Glorious relief. He removed his arm after a few moments and grabbed a piece of ice and left, rubbing it on his cheek. It didn't melt, just stayed there perfectly cool against his likewise perfectly cool skin.

While he holed up in an empty classroom during the lunch, as far away from the windows as possible, he waited for Bella's reaction to his absence. At first he felt nothing but thrilled pleasure, and his heart sank. She was ecstatic he wasn't there. But then one thought changed that.

'_Pity he isn't here to enjoy the sun.'_ She didn't read that day, she lay down on top of the table, spreading out, trying to soak up as much of it as possible. The sun made her happy. It was oddly satisfying in a way, to experience the sun through her. It wasn't an evil fiery orb that burnt his flesh. It was delicious, relaxing, comfortable; it made it hard not to smile. And when she smiled he couldn't help but do so.

Their happiness was spoiled all too soon when most everyone else came spilling out onto the lawn, taking over tables and scattering themselves about to enjoy the heat as well. He felt Bella become instantly uncomfortable again. _'He must have known this would happen. That's why he didn't come. Smart boy.'_

Edward couldn't help but hear the thoughts Bella inspired in others, lying on her back, dark hair splayed behind her on the table, dark hair catching the sun giving it an unsuspected red tint. She'd removed her sweater to expose more of her flesh to the innocent sun's touch. Unfortunately it exposed her to the not so innocent eyes of her male classmates. Their thoughts were repulsive and he tried to escape them, but they were so thick, so potent.

When Bella had sat up to collect her things and leave one of them had grabbed her arm to entreat her to stay. It was a good thing he was alone in the room because an unbidden growl escaped violently from the back of his throat, baring his teeth.

"Come on, Iz, stay."

"I know, I'm such a spoil sport," she joked. "But I completely forgot to do my History questions. Another time!" she shouted back at him as she retreated inside the building. He estimated he had about 12 seconds before she reached the classroom. More than enough time, he thought. By way of the ceiling, so as to escape the sun, he crawled to the window furthest back and closed the blinds. There was a tiny hole that let in a pinprick of light onto his desk but he could easily avoid that. In another half second he had collected his things from the other side of the room, ordered them on his own desk and sat down.

The next 10 seconds seemed to crawl after that. She wasn't surprised to see him, in fact, she seemed happy that she had been correct to suspect he'd be there. She set her bag down at and sat in her usual seat, resting her head on her arms and closing her eyes, enjoying the feel of the golden glow of the sun on her face as she listened to Pachelbel's Canon in D major. She was relaxed and content again. Not only that but she couldn't be that way around other people, himself being the one exception.

He was already closer to his goal. He inhaled deeply, taking in her scent, imaging how satisfying the reward would be in the end after all his work had finally paid off. He imagined the warmth of her neck, and the pulsing rhythm beneath that soft, oh so fragile human skin. He'd place his nose against that flesh, smell the blood, feel for himself the heart that beat beneath her breast. Once again, the reverie was incomplete. The bell rang before he actually went so far as to picture that meaningful _bite_.

Elizabeth sat next to him that day, flushed and glowing from those brief minutes in the sun. Mouthwateringly so. His fantasy skipped from Bella to the girl sitting next to him. _Easy_, he thought. It would take nothing, no effort at all to break that flesh and let the blood flow out. There would be less gratification in killing her than Bella, but at least it would be instant. Prey like her could tide him over until he won his prize.

She wasn't even that much of a prize, she didn't smell any better than the others, and if she did it was only slightly. There really was no reason he should have singled her out to be his goal; severe lack of anything better to do was all it amounted to, an arbitrarily chosen hobby.

Mr. Mathews had apparently asked him a question which he hadn't heard. _'I know you weren't paying attention, don't try to pull an answer from your ass. The nun is the only correct one.'_

"The nun," he answered confidently. He'd read the Canterbury Tales several times, paying attention in this class could give him no better insight into Chaucer's work.

While Mathew's thoughts were bitter, his classmates-- correction, his _female_ classmates-- were impressed.

'_He's so smart.'_

'_Maybe I could ask him to tutor me in Trig.'_

'_Only Edward Cullen could make the word 'nun' sound sexy.'_

And so on and so forth.

When he dropped back in on Bella he heard Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata playing. Sneaky woman, he thought proudly. She'd hidden the ear bud of her head phones with her curtain of hair. Jumping to the teacher's perspective of her he could see it was entirely imperceptible. Pity Edward didn't have a concealing cloak of satiny tresses to hide _his_ iPod earphones. But, he considered, it didn't matter so long as Bella did. Eavesdropping on her music was much easier on his mind than the violent shouting dubiously termed music he often had the misfortune to overhear, not that he had any choice in the matter. He knew humans had limited hearing abilities but how kids didn't burst their own eardrums was a wonder to him.

.

It was another two weeks before he made his first move, silent though it was. Since that sunny day he'd made it a point to let her see him look at which book she was reading; a hint that he was curious about her, even if it was an idle curiosity. Now mid April, he approached her table on his way to his tree. She held up he book at an angle so he could read the title, as she had begun to do, another acceptance of his presence. He placed something on the table beside her before he went to his tree. He lay down, trying to look as unconcerned as possible, all the while listening vicariously to her thoughts.

'_Hmm, haven't read it.' _She opened it to the first page where his name was written in the corner. _'Edward Cullen.'_ A jolt when through him when he heard her voice his name in her mind. It was curious and warm. She flipped to the next page to see the note he'd left for her on a slip of paper.

_You might like it._

A simple missive, true, but less is often more. He was merely baiting the hook, waiting for the bite. No need to set out a banquet when a morsel would work just as well. Then all that was needed was to slowly reel her in. Yes, he could see it now. His gesture intrigued her; he'd opened up a gateway of opportunity. In just over a year's time, an eye blink really, she'd be warm and willing in his hands, trusting, completely unaware, completely at his mercy.

He was enjoying the idea of this hobby more and more. Why shouldn't he play with his food first? Why not enjoy himself? Why not make it a challenge? What else was there worth existing for but for amusement? The world was his oyster...

.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as swimmingly as he had planned. Two days later she'd finished his recommended reading and when he passed by her table she was holding it out to him to return it. He lifted his eyebrows curiously, entreatingly. She seemed to immediately interpret this unasked question correctly and smiled and nodded. _'Good read.' _And likewise offered him something in return. The same note was stuck between the first to pages but this time in her feminine scrawl.

_You might like it._

His brows drew together. Was she that reluctant to talk to anyone? He'd heard her make polite conversation before, why not with him now? He'd thought this would have bridged the gap and she'd at least say something about the book, but she didn't. She remained unwaveringly silent.

'_He obviously wants to keep people at a distance, so I'll keep my distance. I can tell how annoyed he gets when people try to talk to him.'_

He couldn't say _you aren't "people"_ without sounding like a fool, nor could he respond at all without revealing that he could hear her personal thoughts, so he simply nodded at her to acknowledge her offering (which he had already read) and left. Under his tree he brooded. Her perceptiveness was working against him. She was of course, entirely correct in her assertions, however, she assumed she wasn't special, which she wasn't really, he'd just singled her out for the sake of amusement. So those assumptions didn't apply to her.

He supposed that simply meant it was up to him to make the first foray into the world of actually speaking.

Turns out that simple conversation was not as easy as he'd thought it would be. And to think the other day he had scorned her lab partner Kevin for its lack of suavity. It was only after Edward had approached her and opened his mouth to speak that he remembered he hadn't made real conversation with a human in.... well, probably that girl's lifetime. He promptly shut it again and headed back to the building, knowing that he looked like a fool, but taking consolation in the fact that if he'd actually tried to talk to her, he'd appear and even greater one.

'_How can someone so popular be so shy?'_ she thought, almost maternally.

He would definitely need to practice before he tried that again.

.

That night before work he went to work practicing. He didn't have a spot of trouble charming them, he cracked jokes, shared a few witticisms, tastefully complimented them. The only social faux pas he committed was eating them afterwards. There was nothing wrong with his ability to converse. It must be her fault after all, he reasoned. Yet she spoke easily with her classmates, chatted effortlessly on a number of topics, serious or spurious. Were they just linguistically incompatible?

.

He might spend four of every ten years in the purgatory that was high school, but his masochism wasn't as all inclusive as to tempt him to go to Biology that morning. Blood testing. Not a good idea.

So he spent the period in his car, listening to music. Like idly flipping through channels on the television to see if anything good is on, he skipped from mind to mind, looking for, but not really expecting, something worth his time. He was surprised, therefore, to find something that garnered his immediate and undivided attention.

"Iz! Iz!" _'Christ did she faint? Howm'I gonna get her to the nurse's office? She looks bad.'_

He very nearly tore of the car door in his haste to exit the vehicle. In a second he was around the corner from where he'd seen them, Bella was on the ground looking paler than a freshly drained corpse, and he'd seen a lot of those.

"Something wicked this way comes." Bella said weakly. That caused him to freeze in his tracks, had she somehow figured out he was on his way? How did she find out he was even a vampire? That had never been in her thoughts. When he felt her suffer another wave of nausea and complain that she should have never tried to prick herself for the blood testing, he realized that she had merely been quoting Shakespeare again.

He started again at a more humanly pace, still jogging though. "Bella!" he called. He received no reply, verbal or mental, just a moan of discomfort. "Is she alright?" he asked Kevin. It was the first time he'd ever actually spoken to him.

"She got sick in Bio, I'm taking her to the nurse. Apparently she can't stand the sight of blood." '_What do you care? Prick.'_

_How ironic._ "I'll take her, you can go back to class." It was a clear dismissal. Unconsciously, Kevin wanted to do as he was told and get away from Edward as soon as possible, but his human ego kept his feet planted, despite nature's wisdom.

"I'm taking her." _'She's mine.'_

"Yes, I can see that," he said sarcastically. The poor girl was still on the ground, half conscious. The boy's attempts had been pitiful. Not giving him another chance to make a feeble argument, he bent down and picked up the girl in his arms, keeping her as far away from his cold hard chest as his arms would allow, and walked off.

'_Show off, jack ass, bastard, fucking Edward Cullen piece of shit.'_ The stream of invectives never seemed to end. Edward just stopped listening. He turned his attention back to the sick girl he was carrying.

"Bella? Are you alright?"

'_Wha- Who? I'm going to be sick.'_ "P—Put me down, please."

He carefully set her down on her feet, keeping his hands at her elbows to steady her. She sat down immediately.

"Put your head between your legs. Take deep breaths. It will pass."

'_Is it...'_ "Edward?"

"Can you stand?"

"Yes, I think so." She pushed herself off the ground and wobbled on her feet. _'Woah, dizzy...'_

"Light headed?"

"No, I'm fine," _'Or will be in a minute.' _It was then she noticed the crimson droplets were bleeding through the thin tissue on her hand.

Their reactions to the sight were astronomically different. She fought to keep down the rising bile in her throat, while he had to swallow back the rush venom that flooded his mouth, he had to swallow every few seconds to keep himself from drooling like some ravenous animal. He was almost shaking with the repressed urge to end it all and take his prize now. No, he couldn't do that. _Must... resist..._ Oh but what he'd give to suck on that dripping digit, just a drop, a hint, a little taste of his trophy.

"Put it in your mouth," he whispered softly, urging her to do what he could only wish for himself.

"God, I can't look at it."

"Put it in your mouth," he said again, this time with more conviction. "Then you won't have to look at it or see it dripping on anything else. It'll keep you from vomiting. Just suck on it till we get to the nurses office." He pocketed the bloody tissue. "_Trust me,_" he told her, feeling very much like the wolf in Little Red's grandmother's pyjamas.

She did as he told her to. He watched as her trembling mouth surrounded the bleeding area. Watched as her cheeks hollowed with the suction. Watched as her throat bobbed, swallowing her own blood. He groaned slightly and looked away. He'd never seen anything so frustrating in his entire life, nor anything as thrilling.

She'd clung to his arm the rest of the way, refusing to be carried. _'I've made a large enough nuisance of myself as it is.'_

"There's one every year," said the nurse rolling her eyes. "You can go now, Edward."

"I'm supposed to stay with her," he lied confidently. Confidence was the key. Of course there was very little for the nurse to do, other than put a band-aid on her finger and give her a cold compress for her head until she felt better.

She sat there on the cot and he patiently stood by her side. _'He doesn't have to do this. I'm being such an imposition. I hate that everyone saw me like that, so weak. I don't want anyone to pity me.'_ It was all in keeping with what he'd gathered of her personality. _'He's being so nice, I feel bad. He actually carried me. Ugh. If I'd slept at all last night I probably wouldn't have fainted like that...'_

She hadn't slept? He'd checked on her several times throughout the evening before 11, but after that he'd assumed she'd be asleep. He hadn't thought to check on her. He'd been remiss, it seemed. A plan formed in his mind as he heard the approach of another sick student coming in.

"Close your eyes," he told her as the door opened. Seeing her promptly obey pleased him. "Keep them closed," he told her, taking her by the elbow again and guiding her out of the room. "You can open them now." They stood in the student reception and the secretary was eyeing them both curiously.

"More blood?" she asked him embarrassedly.

"David O'Malley," he replied, nodding.

'_At least I'm not the only one.' _"Thank you, by the way. For all your help. You uh... you didn't have to."

He didn't want to sound pompous by saying 'your welcome' and he didn't want be dismissive by ignoring the situation. "You alright? You still look a bit ill. Perhaps you should go home and rest."

'_Oh to curl up in bed, happy thought.'_ "No, it's nothing I'll be fine," she said unconvincingly. Or at least, it was unconvincing to him, because he could hear the unspoken truth.

"Tough talk," he said lightly, then turned to give the secretary his most winsome smile. He knew he'd won his case before he even made it. "I should probably take her home; can you excuse her from her remaining classes?"

"Oh, I uh... I'm sure that won't be a problem. Do you need a note too?"

"Thank you, but no. I'll be back before lunch ends. Thank you Ms. Cobb."

'_That boy is too... Stop it Gladys. He's too _young,_ that's what he is.'_

'_Why is he doing this?'_ Bella thought. Then posed the question aloud once they'd left the office. "Why did you do that?"

"No offense, but you do look rather done in. You really should go home and sleep it off."

'_Do I really look that bad? Clearly I must. And I really am exhausted.' _

They were already in the parking lot by the time she'd finished the thought, he was steering her towards his silver Volvo.

"Oh, my car's over there."

He smiled. "Yes, but my car's over here." From back on campus, the bell rang. "Wait here, I'll go get your bag."

He left before she could protest, which she did silently in her mind. _'He's so nice. No wonder the girls flock to him. I feel so bad taking up his time. When he gets back I'll thank him for everything. I'll drive myself home. How else am I supposed to get to school tomorrow?'_

He simply didn't breathe when he entered the now empty Biology classroom. He knew the lingering scent of blood would have a deleterious effect on his resolve. Her bag was still there. No one, though everyone in the class claimed to like her, had thought to bring her things to her. So much the better.

He returned to his car and a very resolved Bella. "Thank you again, Edward, really. You've been so kind, but I really can drive myself home."

Of course she could, that wasn't the point. He gave her a smile. "You wouldn't deprive me the pleasure of avoiding lunch entirely would you?"

"But, how would I get to school tomorrow."

"I'll pick you up."

"But I live outside of town."

"I enjoy a good drive."

She worried her bottom lip, contemplating how best to refuse without sounding ungrateful.

"Please," he said. "You'd be doing _me_ the favour here. I meant what I said, I love driving, and I'd much rather be on the road in my car than anywhere else, especially the cafeteria."

'_He sounds so genuine...'_ "Alright," she said resignedly.

"Thank you." He opened the car door for her and shut it again once she was inside.

_'I can't believe I'm agreeing to this.'_

When he started the ignition the music he'd been listening too automatically began playing again.

"Clair de Lune," she said approvingly.

"You know it?"

"I _love_ it." _'He certainly makes himself easy to be around, that for sure. Breath of fresh air.'_

"Where am I going?"

"Left out of the parking lot."

And so it was for the 20 minute drive home. Clair de Lune was obviously one of her relaxing songs and her mind went to that untroubled clear place that was usual for lunch time. Again, she didn't have her bench outside, but there was music and himself, and perhaps that's all she needed.

She'd call out 'left' or 'right' as required, but mostly the trip was silent, as their acquaintanceship had been up until today. He'd made more progress in one hour than he had in the entire previous two months.

He finally pulled up to her house and she got out, thanking him for the dozenth.

"I'll pick you up tomorrow morning."

"Thanks again."

"Bye Bella."

As he was pulling out of her driveway he heard her think, _'That's the third time. Why does he call me Bella, I don't know him from before do I?'_ The thought worried her._ 'No, surely I'd remember... Then--? Oh right, that's the name that was inside the book I gave him.'_

Of course her mind had quite impressively leapt to the most logical explanation. That he had read her thoughts was completely out of the question. He regretted that he'd used her name at all, for now she'd correct him and he'd be forced to refer to her as Iz, which he didn't like at all.

'_It makes us sound like old friends, him calling me Bella,'_ the thought with a mixture of old pain and new pleasure. She liked the idea of having a friend. Good. That was his chance to move in closer. He'd have his prize.

As he drove down the road away from her house, he removed the bloody tissue from his pocket and breathed deeply from it as if it were a nosegay.


	3. Much Ado About Cars

Edward had determined how he should go on by listening to what she expected of him. It turned out she expected very little. She had gone over his _'odd but kind'_ behaviour in her mind several times. Thoughts that he might be romantically interested in her were dismissed as quickly as they had appeared. She seemed to think it as unlikely as he did, but for very different reasons. She simply didn't see anything particularly desirable in herself. And for all she knew, she had thought, he was just as courteous to everyone. That would explain why everyone liked him so much...

Bah.

She didn't know why the others liked him because she'd never read that odious book written by that even more odious woman... whom he'd never met but wished to wreak bloody vengeance upon. That would serve her right. What better way for an author who makes up romantic fairy tales about vampires to meet her fate by one. Poetic justice. She'd ruined his life, he'd take hers. Turnabout being fair play.

But more to the point, Bella didn't realize she'd been singled out. Not yet. He didn't want to move in to quickly. He knew how her mind worked. She was alone; she had to watch out for herself because no one else would. She was as cautious and wary as a wild animal, difficult to approach. If you try to pin it down it lashes out or runs away. He knew the best way to tame something was to start out slow. You don't start out by walking up to it and try to pet it before you have its trust, it would flee and your chance would be gone. They'd had a very slow and smooth start, but it had picked up several notches as of yesterday. He had been too bold to drive her home, he saw that now, she was doubting, questioning, reasoning something that she didn't have the resources to comprehend. So she was confused.

Confused meant uncomfortable, and that was precisely the opposite of what he wanted her to be. He'd need to get her back in her comfort zone.

_But I can't rush, either. If I step away completely that'll confuse her too._

That morning he had chosen the music they'd listen to very carefully. They were all songs he had heard her listen to with pleasure. This would soothe and intrigue her, but required no forward action on his part, nothing that could scare her off. He smiled a victorious smile. Who knew meticulous planning and manipulation could be so fulfilling?

She was sitting on the porch waiting when he drove up. He had sensed her nervousness earlier that morning. She hadn't been impatiently waiting, she just hadn't wanted him to have to go through the trouble of getting out of the car to knock on her door. What he found fascinating was that she had known he wouldn't have simply honked his horn for her. _'He's not the type.'_ How she could be so right about him and yet so astronomically wrong was... well... amusing. She'd nail down tiny aspects of his character, but the bulk of his nature completely eluded her. She was convinced that he was _nice_, nicer than most people she'd met, when the truth was that his intentions were so deliciously low, so deviously malevolent, there wasn't a man in her world who _less_ merited the accolade.

He suppressed the chuckle only because she was watching him, but really did want to laugh out loud.

"Thanks again."

_Is that all the woman ever said? Would she ever be expressing her thanks?_

"Feel free to get sick whenever you like. So long as it allows me to absent myself from school, I'll be your chauffeur."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that again, but I appreciate the offer."

"And if _I _ever faint during the day, it's _your_ job to charm Ms. Cobb," he joked.

"Is that likely?" she asked.

"Not at all," he said smiling warmly. "I just wanted you to feel like we were on an even keel."

"How thoughtful." He detected a bit of sarcasm with that one. Good.

The rest of the trip went exactly according to plan. Her reactions were just as he predicted. He was just giving himself a mental pat on the back when two girls sitting outside watched Bella get out of his car. The assumptions their adolescent minds leapt to were instantaneous, spiteful, rude, and all but marinated in envy. Edward wrinkled his nose as if their bitterness actually reached all the way down to taint their blood.

So as not to give the gossipy harridans anymore fuel for the fire, he gave her a nod in acknowledgment of the thanks she would predictably give him, _again_, and as farewell. He kept his mind with the girls to see what this would do and how it might disrupt Bella's mood, which he had taken pains to direct as would benefit _him_. They very well might undo all his fine work. Groundwork, he corrected.

Of several things Edward Cullen was absolutely certain. He knew that blood, be you human or vampire, was the key to existence and one of the few things actually worth fighting for. He knew that Time, was the most concrete and yet abstract concept of his life. And he knew that there weren't two things more dissimilar than how a woman thinks and how a woman acts.

They watched Bella approach with friendly smiles on their faces and vile machinations on their minds. Of course they didn't start off by immediately interrogating her. No, they pretended to be interested in her life, how she was progressing with that English paper, whether she planned to go to the boy's baseball game Friday, if she was feeling better. _Yes, _now_ they pretended to care._

She answered all of them with the ease of someone who has been hiding behind small talk her entire life. That is to say, masterfully. Edward smirked, she wasn't fooled at all though. She knew what the girl's were after.

"So did you get a new car?" one girl asked, indicating his silver Volvo. Of course she knew very well whose car that was...

"No, I don't think I could ever part with my Chevy," she said, and only Edward could tell that underneath the sarcasm and embarrassment about that dilapidated hunk of metal on four wheels, there were the pure tones of sincerest truth. She was actually attached to that disaster.

"Oh..." They waited for Bella to continue, which she eventually did, but not without reluctance.

"I got a ride today from someone else," she explained minimally, hoping that she'd be able to scrape by. No such luck.

"Really? From who?"

'_Whom_.' "Um... Edward Cullen... He's in our English class."

'_As if we don't know who Edward Cullen is,'_ they thought. "Really? You have to spill everything! Are you like together?" '_I hate her so much right now.'_

'_Might as well put their minds at ease.'_ "No, nothing like that at all. He just happened to be around when I fainted on the way the nurse's office yesterday."

'_And that explains why you were together this morning... how?'_

"It was thought best that I go home for the rest of the day," Bella continued. He smirked at her cunning use of the passive, omitting that it had been _he_ who had insisted she go home. "Apparently I didn't look well enough to drive myself. Edward was the only one around so he got stuck with the job. That's all there is to it." _'Close enough, anyway_.' "Nothing exciting."

'_Oh thank God. But still, he drove her home and picked her up again this morning? Her parents could have done that. There must be more. Does he like her? Why would he? God I hate her!'_

"So like, what did you guys talk about?" she giggled conspiratorially, as if this were some fun secret game they were all enjoying.

"Nothing," she answered honestly. "He didn't speak a word the entire way. It was quiet." Bella remembered the absence of conversation fondly.

'_Yes! He froze her out too just like everyone else. Guess it really was just she said it was. I knew he'd never go for her. I'm so better suited for him.'_

'_Maybe I should pretend to faint too...'_

"Yeah, he's more of the strong silent type," one gushed.

"Is he?" Bella asked, not to Edward's mind, with any degree of sincerity.

"Totally. Just my type."

'_But are you _his_ type?_' Bella asked._ 'Does he have one? He seems uninterested in women. Maybe men? No, surely not...'_

Glad that this hadn't set her back any, rather, it made her even more curious, he returned to their normal routine. No words. That day at lunch he simply returned to her the book with a nod of appreciation and left her to her thoughts. As he entered the English class room, Edward was once again overcome with the desire to ask Mr. Mathews for assigned seating. Biting resentment was something he didn't think he'd ever get used to. It was unpleasant to hear. He'd much rather hear gloomy reluctance directed at the person who sat next to him, for that would slowly ebb away with acceptance. But every day it was the same thing, their voices were as shrill in his mind as they were in real life, sometimes even more so.

.

Edward hated having to hold back in gym, but he did every day. Even though he avoided contact sports, it was clear through others that he was the best. For while it was possible to conceal his strength, agility, and speed, the fact that he didn't sweat, he didn't tire, his face never flushed with exhaustion escaped no ones notice. Sure he could stop and pretend to be out of breath, which he did when he could remember to, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Edward Cullen was an athletic titan. While they might despise and detest him outside of gym, he was always picked first for teams. He was no longer the boy they envied or hated, but an athlete they admired and aspired to be themselves. Their thoughts were simpler, less complicated, less rancorous during gym. It was a diluted version of how he felt on a hunt. That drive, that focus. Their minds were clear of other more pesky things. For a reluctant mind-reader, gym was the easiest part of the school day.

.

He checked on Bella's metal state as he was changing in the locker room back into his normal clothes. She was... crying. _Hmm._

Crying?

He saw through her eyes the way she traced a long thin scratch across the side of her truck. Someone had keyed her Chevy. He'd seen people upset about such things before, a keyed car meant a new and expensive paint job, but the paint was already chipping on Bella's truck; rusty flakes of it would fall off every time she slammed her door. It wasn't the paint job that troubled her. She was crying because clearly someone disliked her so much to do this. _'Someone hates me and I don't know who or why. I don't know what I've done wrong, so how am I supposed to make it right again?'_

More tears. She wasn't sobbing at all, it was just a slow trickle, one or two would leak our every few moments and she would hastily wipe them away.

He didn't consider himself a vain being, but he thought it safe to assume that someone had lashed out at her because of him. Word _had_ circulated that he'd given her a ride to school. Even if the two girls from this morning weren't too worried, they had still spread the word. Any chance to show up their friends that they knew more about him than the others did they'd take.

He didn't know why, but he took the keying personally. _He_ was the only around here allowed to target her. She didn't need anymore. That would only distract her away from him. She was _his_ victim, no one else's.

Did he want to go to her? No, he decided, he'd let her be. As he walked to his own car he scanned the nearest minds around him, searching for who had done it, were they waiting, watching for her reaction?

Indeed she was. He felt Kacy's satisfaction start to mingle with guilt, though the former still far outweighed the latter. Then her mind reached the obvious conclusion: that keying Bella's car changed nothing at all, except make her a less desirable person. _'What if he found out I did it? He'd think the worst of me,' _she thought with regret. _'I'm not a bad person. I'm not a bad person... Emily knows I did it, what if she tells?'_

The next day Bella stepped into the Biology room nervously and took her seat, all too aware of the eyes that followed her. _'Why are they doing this? What have I done? Why do they hate me?'_

Edward had a plan which he soon put into action. As she was standing in the lunch line she was accosted by several girls she knew, again, acting friendly to suit their needs, but not taking the time with unimportant questions first. Bella panicked, like a doe in headlights. She hated attention, hated being put on the spot. That was his cue.

"Ladies," he said smiling at all of them.

"Hi Edward," they all chorused back, in the same exact way as if they'd practiced it.

"Emily, you look lovely today." While the others were distracted he mouthed to Bella, _'Go.'_ She did so immediately, not looking back. But he lingered in her utterly grateful thoughts so as to more agreeably distract himself from the conversation he continued with the gaggle. He was careful to give Emily extra smiles and looks, shifting the jealousy away from Bella to a new target. He sat with them until them until they had forgotten their anger towards her completely, then he excused himself and left. They were sad to see him go so early, but happy that he had stayed at all.

_'Oh my god, that bitch, she told him! She must have said how terrible she thought I was for keying Bella's car and then she took him herself. So much for friendship!'_

_'_ _Will he sit here everyday?'_

_'His skin looks so smooth. Even close up it's flawless...'_

He was smirking as he left. Bella wasn't reading or listening to music as usual. She was sitting on top of the table staring at her hands in her lap. She was chiding herself for being ridiculous and giving the matter of his recent behaviour too much scrutiny. _'Don't read into it. Just thank him and get over it.'_

Edward laughed triumphantly to himself as he neared her. She was trying to fight off her attraction, how cute. How futile. He was designed to be attractive to his prey. Her active reluctance was as amusing as it was refreshing. It would make his success all the more delicious...

He composed his face, looking put-upon rather than greedy. Because that was how he felt now, like a miser about to count his coins, knowing there would be more there than the last time he checked. It didn't help his selfishness to see her smile shyly when she saw him, because that was a smile only he saw, the one that wasn't forced to stay in place, but fought to be kept away. He liked seeing her consistently lose that little battle around him. Reluctant smiles were more flattering than any other.

"Thank you," she said.

"Just taking one for the team," he remarked with a smirk. He went off to his tree and let her ponder that one.

_'Team? We're a team? Oh stop it Bella it's just an expression. No reason to make things more than what they are.'_ There was a moment when her thoughts shifted from worded phrases to abstract longing._ 'Ugh, am I really that desperate? __**No,**_' she thought firmly. _'Just because one person shows you kindness is no reason to turn weak. That's why you left, remember? No borrowing other people's strength... You aren't part of a team.'_

Well that had been working until he spoke to her, she was reaching out to him, in her mind at least, but she'd shut him off again just because of word choice. She was, that very moment he sat there thoughtdropping, forcing him from her mind. Successfully. Honestly, the woman's mental control was more impressive than any other's he'd met.

She was back in her book and Edward couldn't find himself at all in her head.

That would have disappointed him except that he knew how much effort it was for her to keep those mental blocks standing. She blocked out a lot of things, he knew, and she'd become so well practiced with some that they no longer required much effort. In time his own wall might solidify like that. But she had moved away from her other troubles, nothing to remind her or hammer away at those walls. He on the other hand, saw her every day. She didn't have the strength to keep that up, surely. He'd see her crumble. Kindness seemed to be more effective than anything else. Generally his looks were the most difficult to resist. Kindness was harder.

Not only because it was contrary to nature but also that there weren't many opportunities. If he tried outright to be nice to her she'd shy away, and it wasn't likely she'd conveniently suffer from another one of those fainting spells. Unless she saw blood. Well, that could be arranged.

He had to swallow down the venom that flowed into his mouth at the thought. No, he'd better not use that route again. Relying on the cattiness of her classmates was another option, like today, but that would probably cause more problems for both of them in the long run.

Several ideas of sabotage crossed his mind. One quick swipe under the hood of that Chevy of hers and he'd have an excuse to offer her a ride home again. Jam her locker so it wouldn't open and then pry it open for her later. He couldn't look like he was _trying_ to be nice either, because that would set up the walls again. He'd have to manufacture reasons to do offhandedly chivalrous things (which he didn't know if that was pathetic or not) or he'd have to wait around for the opportunities, which would probably never come.

Or so he thought. Apparently he and Chance got along better than he'd previously believed, for she seemed to want to cooperate with his scheme and provided him with an opportunity he hadn't considered. Pity he ruined it.

It was one morning two weeks later, the bell had rung to signal the start of the day and she hadn't arrived yet. He knew she was running late, he'd already checked on her that morning. He sat in his car, planning to finish listening to the song before he followed everyone else in. He could hear her coming long before he could see. After pulling that rusty red tank of hers cautiously into a spot, she slammed the gear shift into park, yanked on the brake and jumped out to hurry towards the school buildings. It was then that someone else, also running late, sped into the parking lot, hit a slick spot and lost control of the vehicle. It skidded sideways along the asphalt directly towards her. It took longer for his car door to unlock and open than it did for him get to her. The minivan was four feet away when Edward dove towards her, tackling her out of the way with a hard _smack_. Or had that been a _crack_?

His intentions had been entirely good; he had put his hand out to stop her head from crashing into the pavement, only to have it smack against his rock hard hand instead. He winced at the sound and saw her eyes roll back into her head.

He hated himself in that moment, hated his stupid stone-like body. Now that he thought about it, she'd probably be bruised where he'd tackled her. He'd be like a battering ram to a human; he wasn't some equally soft squishy sack of blood and brittle bones. They could run into each other and their mutual padding would soften a collision.

"Bella? Bella!" he said frantically. Her eyes didn't open.

Ages later, it seemed, the minivan finally came to a halt, having caromed against Bella's truck and the curb. Mr. Mathews stumbled from his car and spied the pair of them on the ground.

_'Oh god no, I didn't hit her. I saw her, thought I was going to but I didn't feel it. Was I wrong? Oh please let them be okay.'_

He ran up to them, terrified. "Oh my god," he repeated.

Edward explained that she hadn't been hit by the car, but she was injured. Mathews began fumbling for his phone to call for an ambulance when Edward stopped him.

"I'll take her to the hospital," Edward said. "I can have her there before an ambulance could get all the way here." He was certain of that.

"No, we need to call for help."

It was in everyone's interest to avoid attention. Bella hated to be in the spotlight, it was downright dangerous for Edward, and Mr. Mathews could lose his job, which he pointed out.

A momentary struggle showed on the man's face as he considered this. In the end and with great amounts of guilt, he allowed Edward to carry her to his car, in which Clair de Lune was still playing. Of course he hadn't bothered to turn off the car before he got out.

An hour later he had called the school, having the secretary put him through to Mathew's office. The teacher didn't answer. He left a message and went back to his brooding.

He'd broken her collar bone and given her a concussion. He squeezed his eyes shut and hid his face in his hands. This wouldn't have happened if he had been human too. What a wretched hero he was.

_Because you're not meant to be a hero. You're the other guy._

Of course he knew that but even 'the other guys' know better than to break things they want for later. Edward shook his head, Bella was wondering where he was. He'd promised her he'd come back after he called the school.

He thought he'd go mad with the amount of thanks she gave him. Her mind, concussed as she was, wasn't functioning as it ought. She didn't even seem to understand that her injuries were his fault.

"Will you stop thanking me for one minute and let me apologize!" he yelled angrily. Actually he hadn't meant to say it at all, much less so loudly.

"Apologize? For what?"

"For _this_," he said indicating her hospital bed.

"Yes, because I'd so much rather be a bloody smear on the pavement."

Edward groaned for too many reasons to go into at that moment. "In any case, I'm sorry for hurting you."

"Alright I forgive you," she said, sounding amused. '_I don't believe this. _He_ saved_ my_ life, and then apologizes... How am I ever supposed to make it to him now?'_

"And I wanted to thank you again."

"You've thanked me enough."

There was a silence in the room that neither of them heard. Her head was buzzing with thought and pain that Edward could only minutely understand. It was odd to think that she could feel pain and yet he couldn't. It seemed... unfair, in a way. _'What would I have said anyway? Thanks for _not_ calling an ambulance? He'd think I was being sarcastic. But they are well over $1,000, it took me forever to pay off the last ones...'_

Did she make it a habit of getting seriously injured? Her mind didn't show him any of this, just the extra shifts of work she'd done and staring woefully at bills.

_'His face, he's upset. He probably wants to leave but won't because I don't have any other way of getting home. I could tell him to go, and call Jacob later. He'd come get me.'_

"Are you alright?" she asked hesitantly.

"_I'm_ fine. You broke my fall, as you know." He didn't mean to sound so petulant.

"You can go, I can call someone for a ride home. You don't have to waste time just sitting here with me; I don't want to monopolize your day."

"Too late for that."

A nurse came in to check her vitals and to wake her up if she had been asleep. She hadn't been, obviously and after asking an obligatory question (who's the president) she left again.

Neither spoke.

_'Usually silence with him is so comfortable. Not now though.'_ Still, she didn't say anything, for fear of upsetting him more.

"Sorry I'm being so rude. I'm just worried," he told her, trying to give her a reassuring smile. He could sense the melee of emotions caused in her at that statement so he rose. "Hungry? Thirsty? I'm going to go get something."

"I'm fine," she answered mechanically. He nodded and left, giving her time to herself. When he wasn't there directing the conversation, distracting her, she found it difficult to focus, her thoughts were blurry and ran together. Mostly she couldn't think of much other than pain. She fell asleep soon after he'd left.

Mr. Mathews came in late that afternoon to visit her. She was all smiles and politeness, feigning that she didn't feel bad at all. She did her best to make him feel less guilty but she didn't succeed. Edward was glad for that, the man _deserved_ to feel guilty. The nurse came in during the visit and explained, "Because she lost consciousness we're going to keep her here overnight for observation. She can leave tomorrow, but should have an adult there to monitor her, wake her up every hour for another day, makes sure she gets plenty of rest and not to strain herself."

Bella's mood plummeted and a panic started to slowly suffuse within her chest. _'I don't have an adult to watch over me.'_

"You live alone though, don't you Isabella?" Mathews asked concernedly, looking between the girl and the nurse.

"Yes," she admitted hanging her head. She felt she was making things more difficult, she couldn't impose on anyone to stay with her, and she shuddered at the idea of having to pay for another night in the hospital, the bill would already be painfully expensive.

"I'll stay with her," Edward offered, then wished he could take back the offer. He was certain there was nothing more foolish or counterproductive to his plan. He should, therefore, have been relieved when both the nurse and Mathews looked at him skeptically, but instead their complete lack of confidence in him made him resentful. He could hear their thoughts, he's just a boy, it's inappropriate.

_I'm old enough to be your great grandfather_, he thought. _And I have two medical degrees; I think I can handle a little concussion watch. _

"Unless either of you has a better idea," he added archly. Sometimes acting like a 17 year old was trying. Having obtained a century of knowledge was a difficult thing to hide. But, because he was perpetually frozen at 17, had less of a soul, he still didn't feel completely like an adult. He assumed that was because maturity comes with the understanding of mortality, which he didn't have. He didn't have any reason to be cautious. Sure he had a job, paid bills, but he had no responsibilities to tie him down. Existence for a vampire was about the feed. Which meant it was about that rush, that pleasure high. His existence was about gratification, the gratification only warm blood could bring.

Meanwhile Mathews was thinking, _'Edward is responsible, he lives on his own as well. He won't take advantage of the situation, he's not interested in girls. He just has a strong sense of duty.'_

The nurse on the other hand was thinking, _'Boy's got it bad.'_

He repressed the urge to argue the point, seeing as she hadn't actually made it. It had been merely a polite impulse, soon regretted. He would make her uncomfortable, being there through the night. He wanted her to warm to him slowly, not be awkwardly mashed together. He had another year, he didn't want to rush things, scare her off. Those walls against him would be stronger than ever. Their sudden close proximity would make her even more resistant. Of course, he knew that she secretly longed for—if not specifically _him_—someone to watch over her, despite her own maternal attitude. But regardless of this desire she kept people at a distance. She seemed an expert in keeping people away.

He had planned to slowly slip in under her radar, but that was impossible now.

"It's your decision," the nursed informed Bella.

_'No. No, I've been nothing but a burden to him from the start. He just offered out of politeness, I couldn't impose on an insincere gesture. But what other choices do I have? I could ring Jake and his dad; ask them to come over... And impose on two people I care about? I could just _tell_ these people I have friends that would look after me, and then I wouldn't have to actually bother _anyone_.'_

Well that was a singularly **stupid**idea, Edward thought angrily. Didn't she realize that she had a type three concussion? That there was a _reason_ people in her condition had to be watched and awoken every hour? The girl's constant desire to not be a bother had always been slightly annoying, but when her notions carried her into the realm of stupidity, the annoyance grew nearer to anger.

"Keep in mind that staying by yourself _isn't_ an option," he told her pointedly, lowering his gaze at her that made the teacher in the room envious. Mathews never managed to look so imperious and intimidating. He'd give anything to have such a severe no nonsense stare.

_'Was it that obvious that's what I was thinking?'_ she thought forlornly.

"I can't ask you to stay with me," she told him.

"You didn't," he pointed out. "I offered."

"Why?"

"Because," he answered. He was about to continue with an explanation but decided that the one word was enough.

And thus the matter was unsteadily concluded.

.

She wasn't comfortable with him staying in her hospital room with her, and yet she was uneasy when he left. This left him rather frustratedly torn. There was no pleasing the woman.

In the end, he found the best thing to do was to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop preoccupying herself with the correct way to act. Not that she was often awake herself. She generally fell back asleep a few minutes after the nurse left. At one in the morning the shift changed and a different woman walked in, Edward was conveniently still pretending to be asleep so he wouldn't be forced to make mutually awkward and unwanted conversation.

_'Daisy was right, such a beautiful boy. That's one lucky girl, concussion and clavicle notwithstanding,' _she thought, looking over Bella's chart. Edward liked the new nurse, not many people used words like 'notwithstanding' vocally _or_ mentally.

She gently woke Bella up, and asked her another one of those questions on the list to make sure the patient is still aware. Edward, still feigning sleep, could still see through the nurse's thoughts that Bella was looking nervously at him in the corner.

"He shouldn't be here," she said with a frown. "He should be at home, in bed."

"He's just worried, sweety. We get significant others staying with their partners all the time. Of course he'd want to stay." His preference for the woman turned suddenly and distinctly sour. _That_ would put Bella off more than anything.

"That would be some excuse, but we just met." _'A few months ago.'_ "He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and is wrapped up in another one of my misadventures."

He'd never heard her say so many words at one time before. Not aloud anyway. Though it was with mixed feelings that she discarded the nurse's comments so easily and without consideration.

"Or right place in the right time," the nurse pointed out. "You were vey lucky."

That Edward had rescued her from a car that had been swerving fatally at her hadn't been in the medical chart, but had been the talk of the coffee room among the nurses of the uneventful hospital. Because they were young and beautiful, it was automatically considered _romantic._ If he looked his 112 years, and it was known that he'd saved from being killed then only so that he could have that pleasure for himself later, he doubted they'd be so maudlin.

The next morning he drove her back to her house and did his best to be distant and helpful at the same time, not an easy a task as it sounds, especially with her insistence that he didn't have to be so kind.

"I'm not being nice out of pity or condescension, as you seem to think," he told her as he pulled into her driveway. "It might have something to do with guilt for giving you a concussion in the first place" _And I plan on thoroughly devouring you later. _"I feel responsible. Even if you don't blame me allow me this... atonement, for my own sake, not yours," he added, knowing that she'd be more willing to acquiesce to anything if it were for other people's benefit rather than her own. "I'm sure you can understand needing peace of mind."

_If this were any other girl they'd be jumping at the opportunity, yet she persistently resists. Then again, she wouldn't be much of a project if she were easily accomplished._

"You're missing class." She told him once he'd opened her door.

"What young school boy doesn't enjoy absenting himself from school?"

"I don't know, what young school boy uses phrases like 'young school boy' and 'absenting himself'? That's the second time you've said that. You speak like my grandfather."

"Probably more like your great-grandfather," he said amusedly, enjoying his own personal joke. He took her keys from her and unlocked the front door, opened it and stood back so she could go in first.

The house was cold, not just in terms of the readings of the thermostat but it seemed rather lifeless, like his own apartment. He felt at home.

"I, uh... don't usually have guests. But you're welcome to the TV, anything you find in the fridge."

He nodded.

He kept respectfully out of her head as she took a bath, only checking in on her once she'd returned to her bedroom. She was having much difficulty getting into her sleep clothes, but he made no move to help her.

_Sorry, you're on your own._

Still, he could sense through her mental hissing that she was in great pain, and once he'd determined she was decent enough, he brought her the recommended dose of pain killers and told her to try and sleep. He'd left her alone after that, sitting downstairs flicking through channels to pass the time before he had to go upstairs again. He knew she wasn't actually sleeping, but reading. She shouldn't have been but he let it slide. At least she had the decency to hide it under the covers when he came back to check on her.

It was nearing evening when she voiced the concern she had been putting off since lunch.

"How are you supposed to sleep if you have to wake me every hour?

"It's alright, I don't sleep." The was a heavy moment of silence after that, in which Edward tried to control his face to hide how appalled he was for blurting out the truth like that.

"But you did last night."

"Faking it."

She looked at him dubiously so he proceeded to recite with precision every conversation she'd had with both nurses, even the bit about the 'significant others'.

"You heard that?"

"No, I'm just really good at this game," he replied sarcastically.

"You really don't sleep?"

He shook his head.

"So you're an insomniac?"

"Of sorts."

"What will you do then? At night."

"Same things I do during the day." _Well, generally during the day I don't slip away to kill one of your fleshy fellow humans, unless of course it's a really good day. _"I'll read. You do have books, I presume?" he asked with a knowing smile, quirking one eyebrow. He turned around and finally inspected the bookshelves in her room. Something he'd been wanting to do. He grabbed a collection of Oscar Wilde and turned to leave. Stopping at the door he faced her and giving her a light smirk said, "Rest well."

It wasn't much work to wake her in the night. She'd rouse, answer his question, then fall back asleep. It wasn't until around two in the morning that when he came to check on her she asked "Do I have a fever?"

"Where can I find a thermometer?"

She took him by the sleeve and pressed his hand to her forehead and sighed. "That feels good. Your hand is so cool."

He stood there, blinking. He could have stopped her from doing that, it wasn't as if the weakling had overpowered him, or had moved to quickly and caught him unawares. So why had he just let her take his hand like that? He supposed that with this defenseless creature at his mercy he had simply let down his guard. Luckily she didn't seem frightened or concerned by his abnormal coolness, only grateful. Not surprising, she was rather warm, even for a human. And she was severely concussed.

He got no coherent words from her thoughts after that, only blurry appreciation for his relieving cold hands. Even that thought faded as she began to fall asleep again. Once her thoughts had fully dropped away he removed his hand. Her forehead wrinkled in discomfort.

Well he couldn't very well sit there the entire night to be her personal ice pack.

Actually, there was no reason he couldn't.

Except in the morning she'd be appalled at his 'sacrifice.'

And he was getting no giggles from just sitting there watching her sleep either.

But now that he thought about it, he'd never really watched a human sleep before, not to remember anyway. It _was_ oddly fascinating... somehow. Thrilling actually, though he couldn't think why.

Actually it did make sense. This was the time when humans were at their most vulnerable. Not that they weren't already easy enough to take down, but it was as if, in this state, they were almost _asking_ to be taken. He couldn't remember being human very well, but he couldn't imagine that he'd been so foolish as to spend hours of every day in this state of vulnerability, anything could happen and yet the sleeper would be completely defenseless, powerless to stop it. And humans all went to sleep at the same time. One would think, if they had any sense, that they would spread out their sleeping schedules so that they wouldn't all be so helplessly unconscious all at the same time. Someone should stay awake and be lookout. Had they no sense of self preservation? Did they really have that much trust in the world that they would close their eyes for eight hours, assuming that they'd be safe? Foolish notion. They weren't safe, not with his kind around.

Not that any amount of wakeful humans could protect themselves from him if he'd made up his mind to kill them... But it was the principle of the thing. Sleeping was just a remarkably stupid thing to do.

And yet he couldn't stop watching her do it. Her vulnerability at this moment made her all the more appealing. Knowing that he could take her now but was restraining himself was a sort of sick pleasure. Her feverish skin warmed his hands, both of them for he'd placed the other on the side of her face. It was an unfamiliar sensation outside from feeding. That was usually the only time he felt a human's warmth... when he felt it drain away.

Smiling, he leaned in toward her, putting his face into her neck. His nostrils flared as he took in her scent.

Enjoying his sick pleasure.

_**A/N: **Is this too dull? Too slow? Compared to EOM this world is a bit boring... a bit too high school. Should I continue or no?_


	4. Part I

**Author's note: **_I have a confession. I had almost all of this chapter written out ages ago, but I went on hiatus. I' still on it but I felt bad for having most of the chapter written without giving it to you guys so I hastily tacked on an ending to it and I'm posting it now as two chapters. Sorry if it's not up to scratch. This will have to tide you over until end of term. (P.S. I've already written how this story ends and I LOVE it. I mean, this isn't my favourite project, but I really really like my ending. Hopefully we'll make it that far.)_

_._

"Perhaps," began Edward, though he really didn't want to. "That if you _do_ go to school today..." (Her insistence, not his) "I ought to drop you off early. The better to avoid the paparazzi," he joked humourlessly.

Her memory flashed to being interrogated two weeks ago for arriving at school in his car and thought it was a good idea.

"We wouldn't want your Chevy to suffer anymore keying," he added.

"That was--? Oh..." She slumped slightly as she made the connection. "Why do they like you so much?" she asked, then gasped. "I'm sorry, that sounded much worse than I meant. I just meant, why are they so... erm, intense, about you."

He heaved a disconsolate sigh. "There's no logical reason for it." A completely illogical one, yes, but he wasn't about to tell her _that_ one. "They just see what they want to see in me. Not that they've noticed, but there are better men in the school than I." _All of them, actually._

"At my other school there were guys girls preferred, but it was never this..."

"Frightening?"

She nodded. _'Is it him or just this small town group of girls, I wonder.'_

"Are you sure you want to go back today?" he asked her, a bit hopeful she'd changed her mind.

"You just want an excuse to skip more school."

_You would too after having done it already for over 30 years of you non-life,_ he thought bitterly. "You didn't answer my question."

"Yes, I'm sure. I've missed enough already."

"Fine," he said, defeated, and left the room for her to change.

As planned he dropped her off half an hour early, which gave her time to check in at reception and get a note to get out of gym, and talk to the teachers about missing assignments. Edward, meanwhile, just drove around the city dreading going to school even more than ever. The past two days and nights had been peaceful, but not empty as they usually were. And now he had to go back through the monotony that was high school, and then the night, which was work. _C'est la vie_... or not.

.

Edward didn't breathe as he entered the biology room, not only because of Mr. Banner's particular stench, but the chemicals with which they were working that day. If it made _humans_ wrinkle their noses in disgust, Edward certainly wasn't going to bother breathing. His partner would just have to assume him rude... which wouldn't be an assumption so much as correct observation. He snorted. Even that wouldn't put her off. Honesty, do girls _enjoy_ being ignored and treated badly? Or are they just so blinded by the image of him in their head that they honestly could see the difference?

"Iz, what happened?" asked Bella's lab partner, loudly enough so that of course the whole room overheard and was now craning their necks to see, or blatantly going up to find out for themselves. _Tragedy whores. Gossip vultures. Rumour mongers, the lot of them._

"Oh my god! Izzy!" said a girl. "Are you alright?"

"I had a clumsy moment," she answered. Fortunately Banner interrupted and sent them back to their seats, but not without a curious glance in Bella's direction. He too was curious, but didn't say anything. Edward noticed how writing was a challenge for her, seeing as he had oh so heroically... crushed her clavicle.

He finished his work depressingly soon, as per usual, and amused himself by stroking the black top of the table, seeing how hard he could push on it without splintering the wood. Just another little exercise in limits and control. He'd done it before, with varying degrees of success. Just before or just after a feed, he wasn't as capable, like he was today. He put his things away and began to tap his fingers. _Bah-da-da-dum. Bah-da-da-dum. _

_'We know you fucking finished. Show off,'_ thought one. Edward rolled his eyes to the clock. Not even close to the end. _Bah-da-da-dum._

"So how did it happen?"

"I told you. Clumsy moment. I fell and something heavy fell on top of me." _'Please let it go.'_

"What was it?"

"Can we not talk about it? It's really embarrassing," she told him, and gave him a nervous and apologetic smile.

"No no that's cool. Sorry," he said affably. _'Damn it now I _really_ want to know. Embarrassing? What could she have been doing?'_ Edward removed his mind from the vulgar places the boy's imagination was leading off to. He highly doubted even Kevin actually thought Bella had hurt herself stepping out of the shower, but of course that's where the boy's mind seemed to want to go. They say that men think about sex every six seconds. Actually it was closer to eight. Edward, of all people, would know. Didn't it get tiresome after a while? He rolled his eyes again and checked the time.

When finally, _finally_, the bell rang, Edward was up and out the door. He was going to hold it open for her, but she was having a hard time packing away her books. He wasn't going to stand around and wait for her so he kicked the rubber stopped under the door and left. It occurred to him later that he might have helped her with her bag, but dismissed the idea as being, one, too obvious, and two, too nice. He wouldn't be doing either of them a favour if people saw him actively helping her. And she needed to learn to get by on her own. He couldn't baby her, nor did he believe would she wished to be babied. She'd be touched by the kind thought, but insulted or embarrassed at appearing incapable.

'_Things really shouldn't be this difficult_,' he thought. '_No one puts this much thought into how to treat someone else. Save Bella, perhaps.'_

As if saying her name in his head triggered some natural response, he jumped over to her thoughts, unaware and unthinking.

She was in pain. He wondered if she would remember to take another ibuprofen, then wondered if he ought to remind her himself. It had only been a vague notion, a mere idea, and yet he found his feet leading him over to her. When he realized what he was doing he promptly stopped and turned around. _She can take care of herself; she doesn't need you to badger her. Humans do this all the time, it's common for them to be in pain. They're used to it, they deal with it. You don't hear her complaining do you?_

Then again, she _was_ the more 'suffer in silence' type.

He was the first outside that day. Usually he waited (pathetically) so that he could walk by her table as he went to his tree but she wasn't there yet. Again, unbidden, his mind jumped to hers. He found her in the bathroom and immediately wrenched himself out again. Not that he wasn't perfectly aware of human bodily functions, but it wasn't something he'd listen in on if he could at all help it. Sometimes it was unavoidable, like while he had been at her house for example, but in general he tried to give her as much pride preserving privacy as possible. Strange, he wasn't disgusted by it; it was just another part of being human. How could anything so natural disgust him? _He_ was the unnatural one, not her. As far as disgusting habits went, he rather took the cake, to coin a phrase. All in all, killing and drinking blood didn't compare to...

He shook his head.

He'd given urination more thought than it would ever merit.

She finally appeared and he was still standing by her table like a lack-wit. It was awkward enough to meet her eyes after his latest mental ambulation, but he put forth the effort so she wouldn't think he was ignoring her. Although at this point in time he wished he _was_ ignoring her. Or at least capable of it. It's one thing to keep your eye on the prize, it's quite another to...

Oh hell, forget it. "How're you feeling?" he asked her, giving up entirely on whatever evil plans, schemes and machinations he'd contrived for that afternoon.

"Not too bad," she said, then pulled out a rattling bottle from her bag. "Could you open that for me? I need two."

He obediently did so. _No_, he corrected himself. Not _obediently_, but _obligingly_. There's a difference. He _obligingly_ did so.

"Thanks." She popped two tablets into her mouth and swallowed them down with a swig of water from her bottle.

"Head still hurt?"

"Not unbearably."

"Good."

Silence.

Would conversations always be this awkward?

_Wait._ There was _silence.._.

Not just between them, not just a simple lapse in conversation but he could only hear _his_ thoughts. He knew she was capable of blocking out things she didn't want to think about but she'd never gone completely silent before. Something must be wrong. And effect of the concussion. He had to get her to a doctor. But how to convince her? What could he tell her? 'You need your head examined; I can't hear your thoughts anymore'? _Right..._ She'd just insist he get _his_ head examined.

Of course, he could just lie.

"You remember the doctor saying you had to go back and get rechecked after a few days."

"Did he?"

"Yeah, perhaps you were asleep at the time."

"Oh." Her lips pressed into a thin line of displeasure. _'Do I have to? I have enough make-up work as it is, and I __**hate**__ hospitals,'_ she railed quickly in her mind, surprising Edward thoroughly. So he _could_ hear her thoughts, at least some times. He eyed her curiously, as if by studying her face he might somehow learn the answer. "Do I have to?" she asked quietly. Edward had just enough time to avert his gaze from her face before she lifted her eyes to look at him. (He didn't want to be caught staring.)

He shrugged. "I call them with an update. See what they say, at least."

She smiled at him, which settled the matter.

.

With the guiltiest of expressions, Matthews watched both him and Bella in class. Too obviously, in Edward's opinion.

'_Cullen saves her life, stays with her through the hospital and after, and yet they act like utter strangers. Was it wrong of me to think she'd be alright alone with him?'_

That was certainly true, if not in the sense the teacher had intended. But the worry was unnecessary this early in the game. In fact, in the next 400 days or so, she'd be safer with him than anyone else. He'd make sure nothing happened to her that would ruin his own chances of eating her later. It would be very annoying indeed after all his planning and patience if she were to die in a car crash and all her blood was wasted.

Actually, he hadn't thought about that before. Humans died in car accidents all the time. In fact, she _was_ very nearly killed by one only two days before.

Well _that_ was a bother. Was he going to have to watch over her, make sure nothing killed her before he could? He rolled his eyes. _That_ was not at all a farvourable prospect. Perhaps it wasn't worth it, getting her to trust him. Sure, it was a lengthy task but doable, as he'd planned it. Keeping her alive? That wasn't what he'd imagined. He decided then that she wasn't worth him being a body guard. He wasn't going to waste his time on a fool's errand.

But then again, what was time to him? Was it possible to waste something one had in infinite resource? He'd made her his pet project. He could either go all the way, or drop it entirely. He stared at the back of her head as he considered the matter.

The bell rang sooner than he expected and he jerked in surprise.

_'Ah...'_ He looked up at Matthews, from whom the questionable sound had come. The man was smirking, (_smirking!)_ at him. _'I saw that, Cullen.'_

'_Saw what?_' he bitterly wanted to ask, but couldn't for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the man's mind didn't continue.

As the class packed away their things, the teacher approached Bella and enquired quietly, "How are you feeling?"

Edward remained stubbornly in his seat as the rest of the class trooped out.

"Fine," she answered simply, smiling an all too innocent smile.

"I just wanted to apologize again. I can't tell you how deeply sorry I am at how close..."

"But you didn't," she reassured, her head started to turn in Edward's direction, but she stopped half-way, reigning her glance back in to look at her teacher. "Don't beat yourself up about it. Accidents happen. It's not your fault." Again, Edward had to disagree, but he didn't do so aloud. That wasn't to say that the sentiment didn't go un-communicated, however. He rose from his desk and went over to the pair, giving his teacher a disapproving look as he took her bag in his hand.

"We should go," he said shortly, not even bothering to look at her as he spoke. He let his glower linger for a moment before he went to the door, holding it open with his foot. "Come on."

"See you tomorrow," she said to Mathews, and exited the room. The moment the door closed she reached for her bag, which he instantly relinquished. "You didn't have to be so rude," she pointed out.

"Well it _is_ his fault. He _should_ feel bad."

"He obviously does."

"Not enough."

_'This coming from the man who two nights ago begged me to let him apologize,'_ she thought wryly. _'He might understand guilt, but nothing in the way of sympathy.'_

Again, Edward was annoyed that he was powerless to argue the point. Not that he could have, in fairness. He knew he was devoid of sympathy, not only did it go against his nature (those who sympathized with their food often went hungry) but he in particular didn't need it. When you can read the thoughts of others, sympathy is rather a superfluity.

"I'll see you later Edward," she said, clearly disappointed in him. He didn't really care. He couldn't change his entire character to cater to her feminine sensibilities.

"Am I giving you a ride home?" he asked.

"Why would you?" she asked, confused. Edward was equally befuddled and cocked his head to one side.

"I thought the Chevy was a standard," he answered, with a pointed look at her right arm bandaged to her side. How she expected to manage the gear shift was beyond him.

Her eyes closed tightly in consternation as she swore angrily in her head. Edward tried to hide his grin. Hearing her mentally shout bad words was highly amusing, given she was usually so soft spoken.

He lost the battle and let escape a chuckle. At the sound she reluctantly smiled and sighed. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble..."

"Bella," he said, and stopped walking. A moment later when she realized that she stopped too, and turned to face him, expression curious. "We," he said pointing between them both, "are very different people. _I_ don't go out of my way to trouble myself."

"You're implying that I do?"

"No." _Yes_. "I'm just saying that I don't make offers that would inconvenience me. I'm a selfish guy. So you don't have to worry about me going out of my way. I don't often do what I don't want to do."

"So I'm not a charity case, then?"

"I don't _do_ charity."

"Good. Well, no, I suppose it's not good, but good that you aren't just..." she trailed off, blocking him again from his mind so he couldn't even find out that way how she was going to finish that sentence.

"Say it."

She released her lower lip from her teeth and finally answered. "Pitying me."

"Ha." He smiled genuinely. "I don't do pity either."

She grinned, but then it faded away into curiosity. "Then what are you doing?"

"Honestly?" _Honestly? _Why the hell had he started the sentence out that way? If there was one thing he couldn't afford to be, it was forthright. He shrugged. "I don't mind your company."

'_Flattered,_' she thought sarcastically. "You know, the others aren't not so bad. In fact, they're really nice. A group of us is going camping at the beach this weekend. You should come, try to enjoy yourself."

"Baby steps, Bella. Baby steps."

_'Now _that_ I can understand,_' she thought. "Alright. I have to go to History. See you later." _'And for the record, I don't mind your company either.' _

.

"Think you can handle him?" she asked jokingly as he jumped into the driver's side of her ancient Chevy.

"I think the more appropriate question is, can he handle me?"

"Hmm... probably not. So could you at least _try_ to be good? He starts whining at 50."

"50?" he asked incredulously, seriously considering that they take his car after all.

"The speed limit's 45 anyway!" she argued. Considering that it was just this once, he agreed... with growling reluctance.

Not since the automobile had first been invented had he ever driven so slowly. He crawled, or so it seemed, to Bella's place.

He was listening in on her thoughts (as per embarrassingly usual) to find her nervous as to how he would get back to his own car. _'Surely he doesn't plan on walking back to the school...'_

"Would you mind if I used your phone?" he asked, once he'd parked the Chevy in the driveway.

"You don't have a cell?"

"No. Can't stand them."

"I don't have one either." He knew this of course, after having overheard her explaining it to a dozen or so other people after they'd asked her for her number.

Inside he feigned having a conversation with a co-worker, arranging him to be picked up, so as to assuage her worries.

To his annoyance, when they sat down at the kitchen table to do their work, her mind was _solely_ on her assignments. His brows drew together in consternation as he observed her reading from the history text. He'd been around long enough, and lingered in more than enough heads to know that no one is that focused. No one. Random thoughts pop up, triggered by any number of things, the feel of the page as you turn it, the smell of something wafting into the room, perhaps something you read sparks a memory of something else.

Not for the first time he thought that perhaps he wasn't getting the whole picture, that there were parts of her thoughts that she was somehow obscuring from him.

"What's on your mind?" he asked aloud (to his own surprise.)

She looked at him quizzically. "Nothing."

"It's just that you're..."

"What?"

"Nothing," he echoed lamely.

.

They fell into a routine, which was as awkward as it was comfortable. No matter how much at ease they felt around each others, there was always an almost tangible tension between them. Really that should come as no surprise to him, humans were naturally ill at ease around vampires; it was one of their oh-so-pitiful defense mechanisms. Still, it was his mission to break through that tension after all, and there was no real hurry. He still had over a year before he could eat her. Plenty of time to intimate himself.

It remained a silly little farce, him dropping her off early, ignoring each other during school, making sure no one saw them leave together.

"It makes me feel more mysterious than I actually am. Like we are spies or secret lovers or something," she said one Friday afternoon after she had ducked into his car.

"Or criminals," he suggested.

"Ooh, I hadn't thought of that," she stated. It pleased him that she was at least speaking more, even if her mind wasn't very informative. She'd often say things that would shock him, because he'd had no hint of it in her head before she said it. That must be what humans feel like all the time, he suspected.

"How about it then?"

"I like it. What kind of criminals are we?"

"Well, we could be drug traffickers. Money launderers. Thieves. Murderers."

"Not murderers," she stated firmly. "There's nothing fun about killing people.

_Oh, I beg to differ_. "Very well then, you choose."

At that moment her stomach growled noisily.

He felt like an utter fool. Not once that entire week had he offered to take her to the store. If she ran out of food would she even have asked? Or would she have tried to live off one meal a day at lunch. Stupid girl.

Without even asking her he pulled into a grocery store. "Do you need anything? If not you can wait in the car if you'd like." Of course he didn't _actually_ need anything, but it was much simpler this way. He knew her well enough to know she disliked the idea of people going out of their way for her, so he'd let her think this was about him.

"No, I'll come in." He watched, but did nothing as she fumbled with her left hand to get the car door open.

.

Back at her house she'd put away her things. He was about to leave when he turned around to face her again. "You'll um..." No, he didn't want to say this. He _wasn't_ going to say this. "You'll call me if you need anything?" Damn it, he said it.

"I'll be fine." _'And I don't have your number.'_

Right. "Well, just in case..." He wrote it down on the dry erase board on the refrigerator. Deciding there was no way to save the moment or make it any less unsmooth, he simply left. He didn't even say goodbye.


	5. Part II

**Part II,**

**If you haven't read Part I, go back and read the previous chapter.**

Bella couldn't help but be a bit envious as she watched her friends swimming. Still, she wasn't the only one not splashing around in the water. There were a few people who stayed with her on land, Kacy and Emily (who were now talking to each other again, Bella noticed) and Kevin came by every now and again to check on 'his ladies.' She was having a good time. Or at least that's what she told herself. She felt so entirely fake around everyone, that she was pretending all the time to be this _Izzy_ that didn't exist. Well, she did exist, or had at one point. She wanted a fresh start, she wanted to be happy. She figured the best way to do that was to start doing fun things with fun people, like taking trips to the beach with a bunch of her classmates.

But if she wanted to be honest with herself, she wasn't ready to be happy, and all this denial was only making things harder on her. Keeping up the facade of a fun and flirtatious Iz was exhausting. Being alone in her father's house was exhausting. Everything was exhausting except...

She couldn't think of anything. Except for perhaps sitting outside at lunch, reading, knowing that Edward was nearby. She wondered what _he_ was hiding, but didn't dare ask. The only reason he seemed to tolerate her was because she didn't pry, and didn't ask anything of him. The same reason she could be around him.

If there was anyone with whom it was possible to be both with them and yet by yourself at the same time, it was Edward Cullen. It was as if he almost wasn't there... unless you were lonely, and suddenly there is someone else with you. She was deeply appreciative of that. There was no intimacy, no closeness, no deep discussions. Just companionable silences or easy conversation. She could never tell him that, of course. What was more, she didn't even want to admit it to herself.

Even now she wished he was there, skulking over by the trees away from everyone else. Safely tucked away in the background. A reassuring silence.

But he wasn't.

"Um, Iz?"

"Yeah, what's up Kace?" she asked, turning towards the girl.

"Look, I wanted to say sorry."

"For what?"

"I um... It was me. I keyed your car but Iz I'm really really sorry. I have no idea what I was thinking or even why I did it. I promise I'll pay for it."

"No, it's okay. It's a piece of junk anyway." Bella was confused, surprised, and even a bit relieved.

"I really am sorry," she said again so earnestly Bella couldn't help but believe her.

"Hey, don't worry about it. It's forgotten."

Kacy looked skeptical. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. No big deal." Then, before she could stop herself she asked. "Why did you, though?"

She sighed. "I honestly don't know. I just... You are going to think I'm such a bitch."

"I don't think you're a bitch." If she was, she wouldn't feel bad and apologize.

"Well, you'll think I'm stupid."

"We all do stupid things."

"Well, it's just that I've like Edward for so long, and he never so much as looks at me. And then you come here and already he was giving you a ride to school I just... I was frustrated, that's all."

"You know that was pure coincidence, right? It was just bad luck."

"_Bad_ luck? You think that having Edward Cullen drive you home and to school is bad luck?"

"Well, for him, anyway. And fainting in school was nothing short of embarrassing."

"I wet myself in the first grade, and I _still_ hear about it," Kacey admitted with a chuckle, as if the memory was no longer shameful, but humorous.

Bella smiled. These kids had known each other their whole lives, and she was just a newcomer. There was no way she could get as close as they already were with themselves. They must have lots of memories of being kids together, growing up together. There's probably nothing they don't know about each other. Which made her more interesting to them then she really was. Her novelty was already wearing off, and most of the guys who had shown so much interest in the first few weeks had let it go.

She'd never truly be one of them, but it was nice of them to include her as if she were. Everyone was so welcoming and nice, despite what this girl had done to her car. She'd seen much nastier things at her old school in Phoenix, even in her private school in the next town over. These kids were a good bunch, she decided. Small town kids, good families, wholesome community. Not a bad place for her to sort herself out. Quiet and peaceful, this small town had almost no crime, there was nothing for her to worry about now but her grades and paying bills. That was enough for her. For the next month at least she wouldn't be able to work so she'd have to dip into the insurance money she'd received after her father died. Soon however, it would be summer and she could work full time.

"So... is there anyone here you like?"

"Sorry, what? I fazed out there for a minute."

Kacy grinned at her. "Is there anyone here you do like?"

"Oh. I'm not allowed to date until I'm 18."

"That's nice, but still doesn't answer the question."

"I uh... don't really know anyone well enough yet."

"You've been here for three months, Iz."

"I'm the kind of girl who uh, looks before she leaps."

"Okay..." said Kacey, clearly unconvinced but ceased questioning anyway.

.

Oh, she smelled nice, delicious, divine, even. If he were a god, that girl's blood would be ambrosia. She smelled sweeter than anything he'd ever smelled before. He didn't even know where she was, only that she had passed by in the last hour. He swallowed vast amount of venom that instantly gushed into his mouth in anticipation.

Edward had chosen to hunt in Seattle that night, and was on the scent of what promised to be the most delectable meal of his existence. He sniffed the air, trying to track her but the rain wasn't helping him any, it kept washing away the lingering essence. He thought he caught her trail once again and was off. He was jumping from building top to building top á la SpiderMan so as to avoid having to weave through the pedestrians below.

It was to his indescribable astonishment to find himself not alone. Someone else landed next to him, and looked at him with equal surprise. This had happened before, but it was never a very friendly occasion. Vampires weren't known for being gregarious, even, or perhaps especially, among themselves. He immediately took a strong defensive stance.

The sharer of his rooftop just closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. "Smell that?" he asked. "Unbelievable."

"I suppose we're after the same kill."

Perceiving that he wasn't a threat, Edward took time to observe his roof-mate. Smallish, the skin that he could see was covered in scars. His change must have been a fierce one. The stranger extended his hand and said, "May the best man win."

Grinning at the challenge, Edward clasped the man's hand in his own, and after a moment of appraising the competition, they disappeared with a whoosh.

Edward was faster, stronger too probably, but he had no idea how keen his opponent's sense of smell was. Thoughts of the scarred vampire vanished as he caught another whiff. Suddenly nothing existed but that girl and her blood. Every point he passed he noticed another scent with it. It smelled similar, a relative no doubt. In his haste he darted through an intersection, avoiding traffic as easily as he maneuvered through his own apartment furniture. He was getting closer. Very close. Tantalizingly close. He was about to go mad with the thirst when he saw her.

A child with her mother. Not enough at all to fill him. Pity. Edward thought briefly it would almost be worth it to let the girl grow to adulthood, so that there would be more blood to drink but he discarded the notion as impossible. He caught a particularly strong whiff and he knew he wouldn't be able to stop himself now. He swooped in and tore the child from her mother's arms, bounding away to enjoy his meal in peace on the nearest rooftop. He was snarling, growling instinctively; warning others to stay away from his kill.

He didn't bother waiting for the scream, he didn't need it, the blood would be good enough he didn't need the other pleasures. He didn't, _couldn't_, wait for anything and had guzzled half of the blood before he was even aware he was being watched. He yowled at the intruder, hunching over his kill protectively. The scarred vampire made no move to steal the girl, he just watched.

Edward continued drinking but kept his eyes locked on the other guy until he was finished. It had been everything he had hoped for and more. Truly the most delicious blood he'd ever tasted. Pity there had been so little of it. He finally let go his hold and rolled off, both appeased and frustrated. That had only whet his appetite, his hunger was still in full force but that hors d'œuvre had been so satisfying he wanted to take a moment to appreciate it, let the taste linger for as long as he could stand before he quenched the rest of his thirst.

"Are you finished?"

The other vampire was almost shaking with the suppressed urge to pounce on the carcass.

"Be my guest," he told him.

As humbling as it might be to jump on the leftovers, his companion didn't seem to be complaining. Never had Edward seen food sucked so entirely dry. The skin was puckered, the man even ripped off the legs and sucked out the marrow. Edward only wished he'd thought of it. He was sure he could have gotten more out of it as he tried, but he was too content to just sit there and lick the remaining blood off his face and hands. He hadn't been that messy in years. Not since he was newly changed.

When the other guy was finished he stood and said, "It's a miracle she'd stayed alive this long. I'm surprised no one got to her before this."

Edward nodded in agreement.

"You know what we have to do now, right?" the stranger said.

"What?"

"Kill the rest of the family, it's only polite."

He skimmed the man's mind. He'd never thought about it that way before. Yes, the fellow was right, it was the decent thing to do.

"Not fair to rid a mother of her child, so one should kill the mother. But that would leave the husband without his wife and kid, which means the father would have to go. If there were any other offspring you couldn't very well render them orphans, now could you?"

"Not in all good conscience, no."

They looked at each other for a moment, before bursting into laughter.

They hunted down and polished off the rest of the family leaving Edward fully and entirely sated. "Well, there's my good deed for the day," he said chuckling. The rest of them, while not as perfect as the girl, was still more delicious than average. It was a very satisfying night, withal.

"Well," said his friend for the evening. "It's been a pleasure. But I have to get back to the Mrs."

"You're married?" he asked incredulously.

He chuckled. "Well, I don't suppose our kind is one for _holy_ matrimony, no. But she's my mate all the same and she's already told me what time I'm going to be home, and she's usually right about these things."

He extended his hand the second time that evening, and once again Edward shook it.

The man was gone a moment later and he couldn't help but feel a certain sense of... something. He couldn't put his finger on it. Loss? He'd never felt kinship before, and so he'd never suffered for its absence.

.

He was glad, in retrospect, that he hadn't taken his car to Seattle, for running off that high was particularly exhilarating. He stuck to the coastline, instead of going through the forest. It wasn't too late, only midnight, and he passed several humans on his way down, not that they noticed him. It was when he was approaching home when he caught a familiar scent and stopped. Ten or so of his classmates were out camping, he remembered. Bella had even invited him to go with her. He was still a good several miles off, but from what he could hear they were all enjoying themselves.

He drew closer, close enough to see with his own eyes. See them sitting around the campfire talking and laughing together. Perhaps it was because he was fresh from feasting with someone else for the first time, but he felt like an outsider now, and he never had before. He skimmed through their thoughts, perused their minds and knew he didn't belong _there_ either.

Bella was in her sleeping bag, feigning slumber as she listened to the others. Surprisingly, her thoughts quite reflected his own. '_I don't belong here. I wish I could give something to the __conversation, wish I could laugh at their stories, recall how fun it was 'that one time,' but I wasn't there. We have nothing in common but a few classes the past 3 months. If this were a Venn Diagram, with them as once circle, and me as another, the overlapping area would be so small, so negligible. They are so close to each other. There's a kinship there that I'll never have.'_

Kinship. Hadn't that been the same word he'd just used?

.

"You know we never decided what kind of criminals we'd be," was the first thing Edward said when he picked Bella up Monday morning.

"Oh right." She gave the matter a moment's thought. "I can't decide. What do you think?"

"I don't see why we can't do them all. Money laundering Mondays, thieving Thursdays."

"Trafficking Tuesdays?"

"Exactly."

"I like it. Sound very professional."

"Well, we _are_ posing as professional criminals."

"True."

"So how was the camping trip?"

"Good."

"First time?"

"Oh no not at all. Charlie was a real outdoors-y type."

"Charlie?"

Her gaze fell and she looked at her interlocking fingers as she said, "My dad."

She didn't want to talk about it, which was fine, because he didn't want to hear about it.

"That's cool. So I take it you didn't do any surfing?"

She let out the breath she'd been holding in a sort of chuckle. "No, but there was whale watching too."

"Did you see any?"

"Well... no, but that's not the point."

"So it's the watching that's the important bit, not the whales?"

"Exactly."

"Well," he said a few minutes later pulling into the school parking lot. "I'll see you later."

"Right."

"Try not to get hit by any cars while I'm gone."

"I'll do my best."

.

It was three weeks to exams, and four weeks to prom, so of course one can easily guess what was foremost on everyone's minds...

"Hey, Iz, wanna come with us into town next Saturday to shop for dresses?" The girls were getting ready for gym, save Bella who sat there in her normal clothes talking to the girls she was hesitant to call friends. Edward sat in his car, eavesdropping again.

"Actually, I don't think I'm going to go," Bella replied.

"You already have yours?"

"No, I meant prom. I don't think I'll go."

"What? Why not?"

"You have to go, it's _prom_," added Mary-Anne

"Yeah, I know," Bella said. "But I can always go next year. You know, when I don't have this." She indicated her brace.

"You'll still go with us Saturday though, right?" asked Emily.

"Of course. Wouldn't miss it." _'Why did I just agree to that?'_ she thought sadly to herself.

She had only herself to blame, Edward thought. It was her own fault for being a pushover. If she'd stop thinking of what other people and did what _she_ wanted to do then she wouldn't find herself in those situations.

"Hey what's that you're reading?" Bella asked curiously. Her gaze was rested on... _Oh spare me, no._ The Book_._

"This?" Kacey asked, lifting up the waste of paper even closer for Bella to see. Edward groaned as the girl hurried over to sit next to Bella conspiratorially. "It's my favourite book in the whole world."

"Oh yeah? I haven't read it."

"Oh my god, you have to. It'll change your life."

"Really? What's it about?"

"Vampires," Kacey whispered.

"Oh." Edward was relieved in the extreme to feel Bella's enthusiasm plummet. "I don't really like horror very much. I mean, I read Dracula last year but it's not really my-"

"No but it's so good!"

"Why?"

"Because, it feels like it could actually happen to you."

Bella's brows furrowed confusedly. "But I don't _want_ to meet a vampire."

Edward sat in his car, laughing like a mad man, pounding his thighs in mirth so that he could spare the steering wheel. _Too late for that, Bella dear. _The fact that the idea repulsed her so made the entire situation that much more delicious. How brilliant! How perverse! How wonderfully satisfying it will be in the end, that very last moment when she learns the truth, but is powerless to do anything about it. The idea was so gratifying that Edward was more determined than ever to lure her in.

That is, if she didn't read that book and get ideas that would push her away from him, or worse, turn her into yet another infatuated girl with the chimerical romance of vampirism.

"But it's not scary at all, it's really romantic. It's completely perfect."

"Oh, well I'm not too much into romance either," Bella admitted. '_Vampire romance? What's next? Alien romance?'_ She shuddered at the thought.

"Actually, it's why I started liking Edward. He's so much like the hero it's scary. They even have the same name, same appearance, everything."

"Same personality?"

"Oh um... I don't know. I mean, they're both kind of stand-offish."

Bella laughed in her head. _'Edward? Stand-offish? Never,' _she thought sarcastically. "So you like that he doesn't talk to you?"

"No, I mean, I wish he would talk to me. Because the Edward in the book is so romantic and so perfect."

"So you like this Edward," she said, pointing to the cover. "Not the real Edward." She said it so inoffensively, almost questioningly, as if she were trying to understand the logic (that of course wasn't there.)

Kacy sighed. "I want them both."

Bella shook her head, trying to clear away the confusion. '_You can choose to love a fictitious character, and lovingly stroke the ink on the pages every night, or you can have a real person who isn't the paragon of the romantic hero. You can't mush the two together and create your perfect man.'_

Edward frowned, wishing that Bella had said that aloud.

The girls trooped out together, Bella followed behind, still holding the book in her hand.

_Just put it down,_ Edward commanded, to absolutely no effect. It was a consolation that she didn't start reading it either. She simply sat in the stands and watched her classmates play badminton...

.

"Edward slow down!" Bella shrieked.

He laughed, laughed at her wide eyed fear, her genuine terror. He laughed at how ignorant she was that his driving was much safer than he was. Still, humans would be afraid of going too fast, their reactions are so slow and their bodies so breakable. He could hear her heart hammering away in her chest, pumping delicious blood through her body with every panicked beat. He almost let his eyes roll back in his head with the idea of just leaning over right then and taking her. How fast it would gush, with her pulse that high.

"Oh my god we're going to die," she moaned.

"I'm certainly not," he said confidently.

"Edward please, I'm begging you, slow down. And you just passed my house!"

"We aren't going to your house," he told her.

"What? Where are we going?"

"To the city. We'll catch a movie or something."

"Edward!"

"Really, Bella, you need to get out and have fun. Tell me truthfully, when's the last time you honestly enjoyed yourself."

"I was enjoying myself when you were going the speed limit!"

He studied her for a moment and found that it was true. She _had_ been enjoying herself until he'd decided to pick up their sluggish pace. Chuckling, he slowed down. Her heart seemed to decelerate proportionally with the speedometer.

"Just breathe," he told her.

"I am breathing. It's lucky you weren't pulled over. I'm never riding with you again."

"That's not true."

"So now you're abducting me."

He rolled his eyes. "If you want, I'll turn around and take you home. I just thought that it was Friday and you might want to get out a bit." He pulled into the shoulder and stopped, putting on his emergency lights. He turned to look at her. "Well?"

Her gaze dropped to her hands again. '_What do I say? What do I say?'_

"Bella?"

She looked up. Still she didn't answer, nor could he reach into her mind. It was very frustrating but he tried not to let it show.

"Or we could just sit on the side of the road all evening," he said, reclining his seat and leaning back with his hands behind his head in a show of getting comfortable for a long wait. Without the conversation, Schubert's _Gute Nacht_ seemed even louder. It was his favourite recording of the piece.

"Do you play any musical instruments?" he asked curiously after several moments.

"I had violin lessons as a girl, but I haven't played in years. You?"

"Piano. But I fiddle around with the viola."

"Was that a pun?"

"Not an intentional one, I promise."

She laughed. "I should hope not."

And just like that they were talking peaceably again. It wasn't until twenty minutes later that a patrol car pulled in behind them. He instantly erected his seat before the policeman came to the driver side. Edward rolled down the window. "Yes sir?"

"I just saw your blinkers on. Car trouble?"

"No sir, we're just trying to sort out where we're going. Thank you."

"Alright, you have a nice day."

"You too, sir."

The officer walked back to his patrol car as Bella smiled embarrassedly.

"I suppose we ought to decide something now," he said.

"You're the kidnapper, it's your decision."

"In that case..."

He put the car into gear and zoomed towards the city, only 15 miles above the speed limit.

* * *

**A/N: **_Is the 'high schooler' speak really annoying to anyone else? I tried to go by the movie and the book but I don't know if it's working for me. _

_I do feel it necessary to say that I don't think that all high school students are this shallow and short sighted. This is how it was in Midnight Sun. And I might as well admit it, it's easier to write shallow characters than giving everyone depth. Sorry if the other characters lack depth and believability. But I think it's rather in keeping the Meyerverse, not that this story isn't already AU and OOC._


	6. One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back

**Chapter 6: One step forward, Ten steps back**

The Vile Woman, author of all his misfortune, in her "book" had so very conveniently skipped over a rather crucial element in human female physiology and the effect it would have had on her precious 'vampires' (if one uses the term loosely). It would have ruined everything had she approached it realistically, so she had simply ignored it.

Edward would too if he had the choice.

He noticed it immediately when she got in his car Monday morning. How could he not? He'd known Bella for three months, it wasn't a new thing but he'd always taken particular care to give her a wide berth during these times. That wasn't an option today, however. His eyes rolled in the back of his head as that perfume filled the Volvo's interior.

Every day there was at least a few girls menstruating, but it wasn't pulsing. It had a different scent. Still blood, still tempting, but if he focused he could more or less convince himself it wasn't food and if he didn't breathe (which given his taciturn nature wasn't difficult) he could almost ignore it without _too_ much difficulty so long the girl in question wasn't too close to him in an enclosed space... which Bella now was.

Not good. Definitely not good. _'That isn't food old boy,'_ he reminded himself... to absolutely no effect. It was still utterly appealing in its way. A pungent reminder of what lay in store for him. The venom began to trickle into his mouth as he imagined...

"Earth to Edward?" she said.

He swallowed and shook his head, rolling down the windows to 'clear the air', as it were. He wouldn't talk to her. If he didn't have to talk, he didn't have to breathe, if he didn't have to breathe, he didn't have to smell her and if he didn't have to smell her he could avoid making a huge bloody mess in his car. A huge, bloody, gloriously delicious mess.

Of course, she might think him rude for ignoring her, but that didn't really worry him too much. He was certain that if she knew the alternative, she'd prefer being ignored to being eaten. Besides, it wasn't as if she wasn't used to silence. Only recently had they even begun to really converse. Right now the best conversation he would be able to make would be, 'So Bella, how do you feel about being eaten alive?' Somehow he didn't think that would go over too well, not that her opinion on the subject mattered at all. It was going to happen eventually no matter what.

He'd made slips before in other times, other places. He'd had to quickly leave town after losing control when a girl on her cycle came too close to him and he'd allowed himself to take in the scent. In fact, if he hadn't been so determined to eat her _later_, he probably would have lost it right then and there. It seemed that his new hobby in self-denial and will power was actually working.

Still, he wasn't a masochist. She'd definitely have to find herself another way home...

_Lead me not into temptation and all that... _He snorted at himself for the quote.

Turning up the music all the way, he flashed out of her driveway and pealed onto the street with a satisfying but ear splitting screech, planning to speed terribly all the way to school. Of course Bella would yell at him to slow down, and of course he would ignore her, as per usual. Problem of not talking solved. She wouldn't suspect a thing.

The moment the car stopped in front of the school she immediately jumped out of the car. He could hear how fast her heart was pounding away in her chest.

"I thought you weren't going to drive like that anymore!" she growled, unreasonably angry in his opinion. He tried to read her but she was blocking again, hiding behind an impregnable wall of anger and fear.

He shrugged indifferently, still unwilling to draw breath to speak to her. She slammed the door and began walking away, her arms crossed over her chest. Why did she make a big deal about it? He was a perfectly safe driver, better than any mere human with their terrible vision and even worse reaction times. The girl just didn't make sense. He rolled his eyes and grabbed her bag, which she had forgotten in her hateful haste. Stepping out of the Volvo and walking around to the back he just leaned against the trunk, insolently holding the purple Jansport in his hand until she remembered it and turned around. She did eventually, her mind just a big muddle of frustration with no discernible words.

Correction. no discernible _respectable_ words. He heard plenty of the rude variety. Grunting angrily, she stomped back over to him, glaring as fiercely as she could. Which wasn't that fierce. In fact, it was almost pitiful to see and he had to make a concerted effort not to laugh. Laughing would mean breathing.

She tried to yank the bag away from him but he held onto it, even pulled it closer so that she had to take a step forward. As she struggled to reclaim her backpack he bent over her and kissed her on top of the head then let go. She stumbled back several steps, looking confused. He simply sauntered back to the driver's side and got in. He was tired of trying to work the girl out. Let _her_ dwell on ridiculous nonsensical behaviour for a change, he thought bitterly. He pulled out, squealing his tires again and burned the rubber as he zoomed away, swerving out of the way at the last moment so he wouldn't hit her.

Looking back in the rearview mirror, he saw her giving him the finger, a perfect scowl on her face.

He drove however he damn well pleased. No mere human girl was going to change that.

.

By the time he strolled into Biology a fashionable five minutes late, she had mostly calmed down. At least her thoughts weren't so clogged with rage and he could read them again. She saw him enter but didn't acknowledge him, not that the ever did in public, but she spared a thought about him. '_It's just that most times he seems so old. I forget sometimes that he _is_ just a boy after all.'_

Once he was out of sight, however, he was no longer in her mind, and her thoughts were almost entirely biologically related.

By lunch everything was normal again. The girl wasn't very good at holding grudges. Her forgiving nature is what allowed people to walk all over her. Except it wasn't really being walked over, because she _wanted_ to do nice things for other people. Why, Edward couldn't fathom, but that just seemed to be the way the girl functioned. He hadn't even managed to confuse her with that kiss either. She just assumed he did it to irritate her further, which was true, curse her. It was hardly fair she could figure that when she couldn't even read minds.

He settled himself under his tree and closed his eyes and blocked her out... out of his sight, out of his nose, and out of his mind. He would be glad when this was over. The female condition was maddening. He'd always thought so but not until this month had it been so patently inconvenient.

"Iz!" Edward didn't open his eyes but that didn't mean he wasn't watching. He jumped into Bella's mind to see Daniel Orvis half walking, half jogging up to her.

"Dan, hey," she greeted pleasantly.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Oh, trying to catch up on this before English," she said, holding up her book. In truth she hadn't been reading Beowulf at all, but a section of John Donne in their Anthology for English Literature. '_And swear, nowhere, lives a woman true and fair.'_

"Listen, wanted to talk before class. Do you think that since our presentation is due Wednesday we could meet in the library after school to work on it?"

"Sure. Think you could give me a ride home? I can't really drive with..." She indicated her brace.

"No problem."

_Well that solves one problem,_ thought Edward. Now he didn't have to worry about pouncing on her in the car.

.

"I broke my collar bone once," said Orvis shaking his head at the memory. He and Bella were in the school library working on their history project. Edward was sitting in his apartment, piddling on the keyboard as he watched the scene from their minds.

"Oh yeah? How?"

"Football practice last year. Hurt so much I bawled like a little girl," he said chuckling, completely unconcerned by admitting this. "What about you?"

"No tears for me."

"Tough guy, huh?" he asked, amused. His eyes squinted when he smiled.

She shook her head, starting to smile at his antics. "No, just unconscious," she admitted.

Actually she passed out just afterward, but still that left no time for tears.

"Unconscious? Must have taken quite a spill."

Edward could feel her hesitating, uncertain if she wanted to admit it or not. "It was an accident. I nearly got hit by a car, and someone tackled me out of the way."

"Wow. Who's the hero?"

Edward wasn't sure whether he wanted her to tell the truth or not.

"Erm... Edward Cullen. He's a junior like me." Orvis himself was a senior.

"No I know him. He's not on the team but he's a good athlete." Edward saw in the boy's mind a few flashes of himself doing various non-contact sports.

"Well, I just remember waking up in the hospital. I was more distracted by the pain in my head. I was pretty badly concussed, I'm told."

Orvis chuckled pityingly, shaking his head and continued taking notes. Edward couldn't help but nod in approval, taking back up his tune with more verve this time.

Another half an hour spent on the project and they agreed to stop and finish it the next day. As she slung her bag onto her good shoulder she said, "I'll be glad when we've done this and I can focus on studying for exams."

He laughed pleasantly again. "They're still two weeks away."

She smiled back and walked through the door he opened for him. "Easy for you to say. You've already been accepted to Cornell."

"Know what school you want to go to?" he asked. "Or what your major will be?"

"I was thinking of English," she said, nervously, for some reason. "I don't know which school. Whichever I can afford."

Her companion nodded. Their conversation back to her house was easy and friendly, interrupted only when he had to answer his phone. It was his girlfriend. "Yeah? I'm on my way I'm just taking Iz home so I'll be there in like 15 minutes. Oh okay. I'll order for us then, what do you want, the usual? Okay, see you soon, babe." He slid his phone closed and explained to Bella, who, unlike Edward, hadn't been able to hear the other side of the conversation. "Sarah's going to be late anyway so I guess we didn't have to leave so soon. Oh well."

Edward switched from his own improvised piece to one of Chopin's more cheerful préludes. When Bella got in she went to her friend and called someone, an old friend that didn't go to their school, and told him about her need for a ride and why. She grimaced as he berated her, holding the phone away from her as he yelled at her for not telling him sooner about her accident.

"I'm sorry!" she shouted towards the receiver which she held at arm's length. "I'm sorry, alright. I didn't want you to worry, but I'm fine, Honest! So can you or Billy give me a ride or not?"

The boy himself showed up at her house half an hour later with his own bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. "Dad was worried, you know," he said reprovingly. He informed her that he'd be staying and Bella gave in after only the feeblest of protests. Her heart simply wasn't in it. Edward was surprised to hear her voice the thankful sentiments that went through her head. Normally she didn't say what was on her mind, but clearly this was someone from whom she didn't feel the need to hide. When he asked how she'd been she answered honestly. Her frankness was odd... almost unnatural sounding to him.

.

The monthly problem ended Wednesday, but it hadn't escaped his notice that she hadn't even made a single attempt to talk to him during that time. He knew she wasn't still angry with him, but neither did she seem anxious to return to the way they had been carrying on the past few months.

Though it had only been about a week, he'd grown used to not breathing when he was near her, so when she surprised him with a greeting during lunch, he simply nodded back in reply before he remembered he needn't be so careful.

He _almost_ asked her if she was prepared for her History presentation as a simple conversation starter, but stopped himself just in time. She'd never told him that her project was today. He changed his polite enquiry to, "How's the shoulder?"

"Fine." She started worrying her lip and Edward didn't think it was because of him. Her mind was buzzing with anxiety, but no clear thoughts. He didn't have to be a mind reader to be able to tell what was wrong, the way she was fidgeting was a tell enough.

"Nervous?" he asked casually.

"I have a presentation after English." Looking down at her hands, she admitted self-consciously, "I... don't like public speaking... being the focus of attention..."

Edward chuckled. "I'd noticed, actually."

She looked up at him, giving him a shy smile.

"No one really listens to what you are saying anyway," he reassured her with authority. "Body language is the key thing, people are visual. Look nice and stand up straight. If you appear nervous everyone else will feel uncomfortable watching you. If you stand up there confidently, or at least giving the illusion of confidence, then they will relax, which will help you relax. Speak clearly, don't mumble, even if you don't know what you're talking about... but I highly doubt that will be the case." He gave her an encouraging grin.

"Body language, stand up straight, confidence, no mumbling," she repeated. "Got it."

"Go on, let's hear it."

"Now?"

"Can't hurt to get a bit of practice in first," he suggested. "I promise I won't throw tomatoes."

"I don't have my visual aid."

"I'll imagine it." Actually, he'd already seen it, but she needn't know that. He already knew most of her project on women and World War II.

She looked incredibly embarrassed by giving a presentation to just one person outside on a picnic bench, and she hadn't spoken more than a few sentences of her introduction before she stopped. "I feel stupid."

"You look stupid," he remarked baldly.

"Thanks," she said with ample sarcasm. '_So much for confidence.'_

"If you feel stupid, then you appear stupid. If you feel confident, you appear confident."

"But I _don't_ feel confident." She also felt awkward about her brace, but she didn't dare mention that. She didn't want to appear ungrateful.

"Why not?"

"I—"

He cut her off. "Do you know the material?"

"Yes."

"Do you trust your partner to know his?"

"Yes."

"Is your visual aid less than satisfactory?"

"No."

"Then why worry?" Though he knew why. This wasn't a matter of grades. It was public scrutiny, but he'd get there in a minute.

"Because... cause..." She floundered. "I dunno," she said with a sigh.

"Try again."

She did, and the results were precisely the same as they had been before. Her mind was clogged with everything she thought wrong with herself, commenting in her mind how her hands shook and how strange her voice sounded. Defeated, she lowered her notes and said, "I can't do this."

"Of course you can."

"No, I can't, there's something wrong with me."

"Yes, and you know what that is?"

She looked surprised and slightly hurt, but also hopeful. "What?"

"You are thinking about yourself when you should be thinking about them. Or, in this case, me."

"You?"

"Of course. Remember you are presenting to an audience."

"I _know_. That's the problem."

"Then why, the moment you begin your presentation, did you immediately ignore me and start focusing on yourself?" He paused and let that sink in for a moment before continuing. "Their eyes will be on you, yes, but like any conversation, you need to look at the person to whom you are speaking. Now try again." This time he snapped away the pages of notes from which she'd been reading.

"Hey!" she complained.

"Again," he commanded firmly. "Look at me, not at your script. Tell _me_ what it is you want to say, not the paper. _Sell_ me your history. I want to be beguiled." He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, giving her all his attention.

'_Alright. I am Vanna White in an infomercial for the Industrial Revolution.'_

Edward smirked at the image.

"Okay." She pulled her shoulders back, flipped her hair off her shoulder with a throw of her head, and gave him an overly cheesy smile he knew was meant to tease him.

"Haven't even said a word and I'm already intrigued," he said kindly.

.

She had actually done quite well during lunch. She was in the middle of doing it a second time when she was interrupted by the bell, signaling the end of the lunch hour, which was actually only 45 minutes, contrary to what the designation suggested. By the end of English, however, she was back to a big tangle of nervous stress.

By some unspoken understanding, they both waited for the other students to trail out.

She looked like she was going to be sick. "I can't do this, Edward, I can't."

"Nonsense."

"No, really." She was actually shaking. "I can't go in there."

"You were doing so well during lunch. What happened to Vanna White?" he asked. Her expression suddenly stiffened and she looked at him with suspicion sparking her eyes. The expression _'mind reader'_ actually flashed in a panicked blur through her thoughts. "Don't look so offended, that's obviously who you were going for, Bella," he told her condescendingly. He had purposefully let her think he had misinterpreted her expression as one of insult, rather than alarm. "And there was nothing wrong with that. It was good. Where did all that cheeky confidence go?"

Her momentary distrust had vanished, forgotten as she confided, "It's one thing to do that in front of just you. It's something else completely to stand up in front of a whole class..."

"Vanna does it in front of hundreds of thousands of people across the country several nights a week." He felt her mind stagger at the thought of having to be in front of such a numerous audience.

"I'm no Vanna White," she said half morose, half thoroughly grateful by the fact.

"You're dazzling enough for 18 people. That is when you aren't whining," he said disapprovingly. Why was it that girls had no confidence in themselves? Even sensible types like Bella.

At this last comment there came an amused mental snort from Mr. Mathews, who hadn't yet vacated the room. Again, Edward forbore to glare, because the teacher hadn't actually laughed at him. To any observer, he was still poring over the text at his desk, not listening into a conversation that was no business of his. Edward picked up her bag and directed Bella out into the corridor before they continued the conversation. As it happened, her history classroom was only down the hall of the same building.

"Go on, flip your hair. Let me see those pearly whites." Unconsciously, he'd given her his own version of a large toothpaste ad smile, the sight of which made Bella visibly flinch for a reason she couldn't name. Of course Edward could. It was the natural, healthy reaction. There were very few people as naive as Little Red Riding hood. 'Why grandmother, what large teeth you have!' Bella, on some level, knew he was a predator and was afraid.

Edward quickly covered them with his lips, converting it into a closed mouth smile. She still seemed a bit dazed and the tiny voice within her that said only 'fight' or 'flight' was still urging her to flee.

Changing tack, he retreated, taking a safe step away from her and in his lowest, most soothing voice said, "Bella..."

The 'deer in headlights' expression melted into that of one of... trust? He hoped so but her thoughts gave him no clue as to why she was making the face she was, it was just waiting in expectation.

"Hey Iz!" Daniel Orvis greeted cheerfully. He wasn't at all nervous, nor should he be.

"Hey Dan," she sadly back. Her tone was lost on him.

"You ready for this?"

Bella turned a woeful look on Edward. He returned her gaze sternly. "Yes," he answered firmly for her. "She is."

Orvis redirected his indiscriminate smile to Edward. "I here you have a mean tackle, Cullen. Perhaps you should join the football team next year," he joked. Edward smiled sourly in response, which didn't bother Daniel at all. He simply turned to Bella. "It's go time!"

The boy's energy and enthusiasm seemed to be catching, at least it cheered Bella up and she started chuckling. By scanning his thoughts, Edward learned that had been the football player's intention. He didn't stop there, though. No no, he made Bella_ growl_ to 'get in her game.'

She did growl, pitifully at first, because she was so self-conscious and understandably confused at the point of the exercise. Orvis didn't seem to know what self-conscious even meant. "Louder, Iz. Fiercer! Scare me!" He demonstrated again. "Aarrrrrrrr!"

She finally got the hang of it. Snarling, she snapped as if to take a bite out of him.

"Atta girl!"

He put a hand out in front of him, clearly in expectation that she would do the same. It appeared as if it were some sort of two person huddle, and once she complied they would count to three and say 'Break!' or 'Go wildcats!' or something equally trite and unoriginal that typifies high school athletics.

"Get in here Cullen!"

Edward refrained. His hands were too noticeably cold for that, and such sopping camaraderie wasn't his style so he remarked dryly, "I think I'll stick to being a cheer leader." He cleared his throat and added unenthusiastically, "Go team" as he made a fist and punched it a mere two inches into the air as a token gesture.

Bella's response to this was genuine laughter, not the shy kind Orvis had managed to produce, but loud and full. When she managed to stop she was still smiling broadly. Edward lifted one eyebrow and smirked. "Perhaps it should be Vanna White trying to imitate _you_." Her smile changed, but didn't dim at this, and she let the older boy usher her into the classroom. Throwing a casual glance behind him, Orvis winked at Edward before disappearing inside the classroom.

Now there was a man who didn't dislike him. His good cheer, perhaps, wasn't as genuine as he wanted all to believe, but the boy was, if not exactly 'well-mannered' was at least kind. Almost overly so. Still, it wasn't hard to see why the kid was so popular. He positively radiated charisma.

Edward was far from being envious. Orvis could keep his popularity. He only wished he could shed his own. No amount of coldness or anti-social behaviour, or even downright rudeness seemed to alter his status. Again, he could only blame the book. The girls didn't like him, they liked _him_. They were only pretending that he was this other fellow, (who didn't even seem that worthy of such frightening devotion and adoration anyway, in his opinion.)

Wandering back to his own class at a humanly pace, he decided to watch Daniel and Bella's presentation. She wasn't as cheesy and carefree as she had been by the picnic table, gesturing to the empty air that represented her visual aid, but neither was she fumbling over her words, nor reading directly from her notes. Edward suspected that having Orvis there to share the attention helped things, his own confidence and lack of concern carrying over to her.

Edward had always assumed that her sympathy was a liability, a hindrance, a weakness that kept her from doing what was best for her _own_ interests. In this case, however, it seemed to be working _for_ her, rather than against.

That gave him an idea... Why hadn't he thought to use her sympathy against her until just now? All this time he'd been trying to help _her_ to get close to her, when all it would take would be to sit back and let _her_ help _him_. Granted, there wasn't much a pathetic human could do for him, but he could make up some spurious reason that would appeal to that bleeding heart of hers.

The mental image of that expression caused him to groan and lick his lips. '_Bleeding heart indeed_,' he thought, a frisson of pleasure shot through him.

Grinning with this new brillaint idea, he passed his own classroom, simply deciding not to go. What was the point? He strode pass the door. Knowing, but not caring, that the teacher had seen him saunter by, he ambled toward the music building.

Now that was the one class that gave him pleasure, or had, in the past. He wasn't taking any music classes this semester, more's the pity. The had been only one downside to those classes and it was the concerts. Mr. Howard, the music teacher, had given up on making Edward perform in public, much to the man's chagrin. He wanted to show Edward off, dazzle the parents and faculty with his pupil's talent. He assumed the man thought Edward's skill would be a reflection on his teaching ability. Or perhaps the man was simply a true lover of music. Or both. Not that it mattered, he'd never once played in front of an audience.

There were only a few people there, including Howard, who perked up when he saw Edward. He could hear before he even entered the building that no one was on the piano, but, in keeping with his quiet, respectful human character, he politely asked if one was free anyway.

"Of course, Edward, of course."

He didn't mind Mr. Howard much either, really. His blood was much more appealing than Banners, which worked against him, but he was easy to be around... for the most part. His head was filled with music most the time, a pleasant change from the inane mental ramblings of most people. However Howard's mind tended to be tempestuous, and one never knew when he'd suddenly break away from a concerto and think something so abruptly wild that it gave Edward mental whiplash every time. These thoughts usually weren't inane, but... well Edward knew the human mind well enough to know that if the rest of the world knew what _he _knew about the music teacher, they would certainly like him less than Edward did. He didn't mind the man and refrained from judgment because he was entirely removed from human concerns and sentiment. What's more, he ate and killed people; that hardly gave him room to throw any stones or give morality lessons.

He positioned himself on the bench and felt the room grow quieter around him. Daneille stopped playing her oboe and the brass section ceased the conversation they were having. Edward paid them as little mind as he was capable of and tried to drown out their unwanted thoughts with the sound of Chopin's Andante spianato. Opus 22. _Tranquillo_.

He certainly was playing a lot of Chopin lately.

It was a pleasure, as it always was, to play on a real piano, the plink of the keys beneath his fingers and the proper echo from the body of the instrument was far more satisfying then the stale electronic sounds that issued from his keyboard at home.

It was a pity the piece only lasted about four and a half minutes. With the minds of everyone in the vicinity focusing mainly on the same thing, the song, it was the closest thing he ever came to mental respite. During the day at least. At night he could go deep into the wild so as to be miles away from the nearest thinking being. Blissfully out of range.

Sticking with Chopin he smoothly moved on to number 4, Opus 52, a piece that he could stretch to just over nine and a half minutes. When he finished he stood and thanked Mr. Howard for the use of the music room as the other occupants' minds started growing louder with thought again.

Unless it was about his fingers, the girls there weren't preoccupied with the aesthetics of his humble self, but of his music. When he passed Danielle, he gave her a small smile in response for her unspoken compliment and blood pooled in her cheeks. The sight was a lush one but he had eaten Monday night in the attempt to curb his desire to pounce on Bella before it was her time. His thirst was still 'at the bottom of the ebb' as it were, and he only experienced a mild scratchiness in the back of his throat. Nothing, really.

He passed the classroom buildings and tried his best to block out the ever present buzzing of the minds within and walked straight to the administration building.

Ms. Cobb was at her usual seat behind her desk, reading romantic fiction on her computer. Edward had heard a few erotic lines of the purple prose before he came in. She hastily minimized the window, though he couldn't possibly see it from his position she still felt a need to hide it.

"Edward. Is there something I can do for you?"

"I'm actually not feeling too well."

Untrue, but he needed an excuse for having skipped. Not that much would happen if he didn't. It wasn't as if the school could call his parents. He might get detention, but he'd decided that standing here and telling laughably enormous falsehoods to Ms. Cobb would be more entertaining and concocted a tale of being violently ill in one of the boy's bathrooms just after English.

Edward didn't feel even a scrap of guilt at the woman's sincere concern for his specious ill health.

"Oh you poor dear! Was it something you ate?"

Since he had no idea what had been served at lunch that day he decided it would be better not to make that up and said truthfully that he'd skipped lunch. "Didn't feel like I could stomach anything," he told her with a weak smile.

It was too easy. He was walking out of the office with a smile on his face and an excused absence from Calculus and Phys Ed. If Howard mentioned that Edward had been perfectly healthy and playing away in the music room during the time he'd claimed to having been sick in the bathroom, then he'd deal with it later. In fact, it almost wished it happened, just to give him something more challenging to do.

He didn't know why but he'd always thought of his having to mislead people as a chore. He'd only just now come to appreciate it. In fact, he might simply go around lying to people all day. It was an amusement of sorts; it made him think at least, which was more than he could say for any of his classes.

He'd forgotten about Bella and her project the moment he'd entered the music room, but when he dropped back in on her it was over and she was back in her seat listening to her teacher. By lingering in her mind, he discovered that her ride, her friend that was staying with her until she healed and could drive herself, would pick her up after he himself was finished with his own classes on the reservation, some distance away. Not having a car of his own, he was to drive to her place on his motorbike, trade it for her Chevy and then come get her. That would be in about two hours according to Bella's calculation. Seeing as she wasn't going to be participating in gym, she decided to spend that time being a good student and studying for her upcoming exams in the library.

Since he was there before she was he could hardly be accused of following her there even though he technically had.

She was a bit later than either of them expected, due to a tree branch falling on top of her. No doubt it had been snapped during the ferocious storm the night before and had only decided to fall to the ground just as Bella was walking underneath it. Edward watched the whole thing and burst out laughing, earning him a glower from the librarian.

The blow knocked her to the ground but other than that, had done nothing harmful. She got up and brushed herself off and continued on or the library. When she walked in he could immediately tell that the tree hadn't even left any bleeding scrapes, for which he was grateful.

Bella was surprised to see him.

He shrugged off her comment with a simple "Coincidences happen."

"But shouldn't you be in P.E.?" she asked.

"Not going," he replied with another shrug.

"You're ditching?" Hints of both disapproval and admiration coloured her voice. Gym was _not_ her favourite class and had she not an excuse already, she'd be longing for ways to avoid it as well.

"No, as a matter of fact. The administration was kind enough to give me a pass," he said lifting his chin indignantly.

If Bella wore glasses, she would have been peering over them censoriously at him. "Do you make it a habit of flirting with Ms. Cobb?"

"I'll have you know Fiona is a charming woman," he said with feigned sincerity.

"Really?"

He shook his head. "Not at all, actually." Bella chuckled at this. "Just couldn't bear the thought of sitting through another painfully dull Calculus class so decided to take the rest of the day off."

"Life must be hard, being a genius."

"I'm a genius?"

"That's the word on the street."

"Then why would I bother to study for exams?"

"It's just a cover and you're actually stalking me?"

"That _is_ a distinct possibility..." He amusedly admitted with more honesty than she knew. "But I was still here before you even arrived."

"Then I guess you aren't a genius after all, or a stalker."

"Alas."

"I suppose that means we both have to study," she said with a dramatic sigh and began removing textbooks from her bag.

"You have a leaf in your hair, by the way," he pointed out.

Bella groaned and put a hand up to her head to search for it. She somehow kept passing over it so he reached over and plucked it out for her as she explained the incident with the tree, which he already knew, of course, because he _had_ been stalking her, mentally, all the way there.

"What impossible timing you have," he remarked.

'_Bad luck Bella,'_ she thought sarcastically. Edward saw the familiar flashes of various memories of 'near misses' including one she visited most frequently, the accident that had claimed her father's life but from which she had walked away alive, if not unharmed. "It's a miracle I've lasted this long. The world has it out for me," she said trying to sound casual. "Always has."

_It undoubtedly does..._ He thought with amusement. With him around, it was an absolute certainty. The world would finally get its wish, as would he. Poor girl, she didn't stand a chance. Edward grinned.

"Sorry I wasn't there to tackle you out of the way, and break your other clavicle."

"I forgive you."

"I can go beat up the tree," he offered.

"Naw, I forgive it too. In fact, it's rather worse off than I am. At least I still have all my limbs."

Instead of studying, the simply let the conversation flow. They'd never talked so easily before. Well, whispered, actually, seeing as they were in the library. It started off with him asking how her presentation had gone and just went on from there.

They'd been talking about the uniforms at her previous school when he asked, "So why did you move in the middle of the year? Surely your tuition as already paid, you could have finished the year there."

_'I needed a change, I had to get away. I needed to not be pitied every day, as if I needed reminding of how sad I am.'_ She shrugged her one shoulder shrug again, not meeting his eyes. "It was just easier this way, all things considered."

She put up such an impressive facade, and if he were in any way decent he'd feel guilty for having been able to callously hear right through it.

"I can understand that." He waited for her to look back up at him and he held her eyes for a moment. He could hear her thinking that he didn't understand at all, so he added, "Losing a parent is tough."

It was nothing he couldn't have reasonably worked out for himself. He'd stayed with her for two nights while she was concussed. It was clear she lived alone. That was also the reason she couldn't simply get a ride from her parents and had had to rely on him and her friend.

She was trying to work that through too, reason out how he could have known when she hadn't mentioned a thing. She came up with the same reasons he had, even thought perhaps he might have read about it in the paper. She wanted to ask him how he knew, but the desire to know was outweighed by the ever deeper desire _not_ to talk about it but the unknowing left her growing more suspicious of him than anything.

"I heard Mr. Mathews tell the doctor when it came to your emergency contacts," he said by way of explanation. It wasn't quite a lie. He _had _heard it, but he had been in a completely different part of the hospital at the time. Her emergency contact was her step-father who lived several states to the south.

"Oh," was her weak reply. _'He knew all this time and didn't say a thing.'_

"I live by myself as well. My emergency contact is my boss." Even if it was for entirely professional reasons, he was still the only person who would mind if Edward were to drop dead, which was impossible of course, which was why he hadn't really worried himself about it.

Her expression was one of understanding and compassion, though both were inappropriate, seeing as she didn't understand, nor was he in any way to be pitied. By the time his parents had doubtlessly died he was beyond the point of caring.

"I... had no idea." '_No wonder...'_

Not even in her mind did she expound on that, but he could sense that she felt more connected to him now. He had succeeded, she was letting him get close. She wasn't talking about it, but in her head that connection was there. Edward grinned, mentally of course. Taking the time to tame his food... It was a rather feline approach, he had to admit, playing with the prey first, but it was entertaining.

"Well, these exams aren't going to study for themselves," he said with a bright smile, a clear indication that the conversation was over.

She smiled back, relieved, thinking (incorrectly) that it hurt him to talk about his parents as it did her and that he could tell she didn't want to talk anymore either. '_It's like he can read my mind sometimes,'_ she mused.

.

They had the whole table (and library too, for that matter) to themselves so they carelessly scattered their books out across it. Once the hour ended a few freshman trickled in, not being old enough to drive themselves and waiting for rides, just like Bella. They didn't take any notice of them, being too high strung about exams. By that time Bella's mind had relaxed into the more agreeable task of studying.

After another brief time he heard her shuffling around in her bag. "Where is my pencil?"

There was one resting in between the two pages of the open book he was half-heartedly reading. Without looking up, he slid it over to her.

Bella went very still, in body and mind. He looked up, questioningly.

She shook herself and said, "Thank you," before ducking her head down to continue with her work. Or at least to pretend to. She wasn't thinking about exams at all anymore. _'Get a grip, it was coincidence. Not _even_ coincidence. It was nothing. Stop being stupid. __**Focus**__.'_

That last mental command did the trick and for the next half hour, he heard nothing but a dull buzz from her, mostly historically related. He didn't pay too much attention, he knew that material and eavesdropping while she studied was pointless. He had let his mind wander elsewhere as he feigned reading from his text. Not that he meant to, but he couldn't help but hear other people's thoughts.

Mostly they were along the lines of either studying or prom, save the librarian who was griping about a bunion on her foot, which made standing uncomfortable.

"Edward!" Bella shouted suddenly and loudly, though he was sitting right across from her.

"What?" His head jerked up, and he met her wide and, for some reason, terrified eyes. '_Oh my god, he can._'

It was then that he realized she hadn't said his name aloud at all, nor asked for a pencil. She'd merely thought those things. He'd slipped, big time, and now she knew.

It felt just as if her mind had been a trunk he'd been peering into and it had suddenly slammed shut, crashing down hard on whatever part of him he'd had inside, his own mind perhaps. He recoiled from her as if she had screamed violently in his ear at the same time shoving him bodily away, although she hadn't.

But it hurt. At least, he thought it did. It wasn't a pain he could feel, not physically, but being forcefully evicted from her mind had been... _acutely_ unpleasant, to understate the matter.

Of course, to any outside observer, it would appear as if out of no where, he had twitched wildly for no reason. To Bella, however, his physical reaction only reinforced her suspicions. Rather than afraid and disbelieving as she had only moments ago, she now looked furious. He'd never seen her so livid. She rose from the table, shoved her books into her bag and stormed off.

He was still so dizzied from that violent expulsion from her thoughts that he couldn't even hear the angry parting words she'd screeched at him, much to the librarian's outrage.

It took him no time to collect his things and go after her.

"Bella!" he called after her, trying not to run _too_ fast. "Bella stop!"

She didn't stop, not until she was in the parking lot. By that time the sound of her approaching Chevy was loud enough so that even she could hear it. In fact, he could see it pulling in even then.

"Bella wait!"

"No!" she shouted. "You stay out of my head, Edward Cullen! Stay out of my head!" Bending her head low so the hand in her sling could reach, she covered her ears of all things, as if that's where thoughts escaped from. If anything it should have been the eyes, not that that would have helped either, though she did refuse to meet his gaze. He rather suspected though that that had more to do with her fury. She needn't have bothered. She was completely closed off to him now. She'd shoved him out and slammed the door, mentally speaking.

She threw her bag into the back of the pick-up before it had even stopped and jumped inside, telling her friend to get her out of there, now.

The air had been going to use to yell back at her instead escaped him in a long sigh as he watched her and what's-his-face drive away.

"Alright, Stephenie Meyer, try getting your hero out of this one," he thought acerbically. Ah, but her characters were so much more cooperative._ Her_ Bella accepted Edward's ability no problem because she was madly in love... or madly infatuated.

_His _Bella was just mad, period.

He expected this setback would drastically impede his plans.


	7. Reconciliation of Sorts

_**Author's Note: **__I'd like to remark here that I wouldn't put a heroine in a position in which Bella finds herself in this chapter, but it's a major scene in Twilight and Midnight Sun. I think that it's a trite mechanism for the hero to come charging in to save fair maiden from a 'fate worse than death'. I do not agree with making rape, attempted or not, a part of a romantic scenario in any way, a la Meyer. That having been said, I'm going to go off and be a great bloody hypocrite._

**Chapter seven: Reconciliation of Sorts**

As he sat at the round table, idly turning up the edges of his two cards, Edward considered the new development. The only thing keeping Edward from laughing outright at this new roadblock of having Bella know he could read her mind, was the possibility she might tell others. Of course, Bella, being Bella, wouldn't likely go off and repeat her suspicions for fear of sounding a madwoman. However, in the improbable case that she _did_ confide in one of the girls, he knew that they _would_ believe her. Which would be inconvenient. If Bella breathed a word, he would have to leave town. Mentally he began listing items he'd have to sell, things he couldn't move. All of his documents were forged, as far as the U.S. government was concerned, he didn't even exist. He'd jilt his landlord, obviously, break his lease and his contract at work. He'd need a new tag for his car and—

"Hey kid, it's to you," the man to his left grumbled. Edward grumbled too and knocked on the table. He'd wait for the river to up the bet. He didn't want to scare the guys away too soon or they wouldn't risk as much. Make them think he didn't have a hand worth playing. As it stood, he had pocket Jacks and there was already one on the flop, along with a useless eight of clubs and the two of hearts. Edward knew he had the best hand and he'd play it as high as he could.

He knew poker would be good for him, but he'd have to find better games. These guys weren't real players. Granted, neither was he but he wanted higher stakes. By the end of the night he'd only made $210. Not enough if he'd have to move again. Of course he could resort to simple theft. He normally didn't like to up the crime rate in the area where he lived, it made people in general more on edge and less trusting. Fear wasn't a pleasant smell and small safe towns were the most peaceful. But if he was leaving anyway he might as well do.

But he wouldn't know if that would be necessary until tomorrow at least. He'd done some mind hopping after she left school that day, but she didn't appear to have told any of the girls whose minds he'd searched.

Not surprisingly, Bella pointedly ignored him all the next day. She stayed in the cafeteria throughout the entire lunch period and in every class he had with her he noticed she'd put her hands over her ears, or blast music from her iPod, no doubt in an effort to tune him out. From her behaviour he'd gathered she wasn't aware that she'd completely shut him out.

"Y'alright Iz?" asked O'Malley. 'Iz' was a flagged word, the moment he heard anyone utter it he'd jump into their minds. He'd been following her all day through other people to make sure she didn't snitch.

"Of course," she replied with a smile. Edward knew why the boy had asked. Her eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, and dark bruises seemed to stain the delicate skin beneath. After a skeptical look she added yawning, "I couldn't sleep last night that's all. Just a bit tired."

"Well you could take a nap now, if you like. Use my shoulder for a pillow." It was such an obvious line but Bella just shrugged and lay her head down and closed her eyes. Edward wanted to shout at her for letting down her guard and foolishly closing her eyes and exposing her neck like that, but then he remembered that O'Malley wasn't that kind of a threat and he needed be worried that she had no qualms leaving her throat exposed and sleeping in a public place. The self-preservation instinct wasn't strong with her apparently. Like she said, it was a miracle she'd lasted this long.

And she wouldn't last much longer if all went according to plan.

.

Saturday was sufficiently dreary. No chance of sun whatever, so he went for a southward drive. He knew that she was going shopping with the girls for their dresses and without even thinking about it, he followed Bella through the other girls' thoughts, and when they left together in one car that afternoon, he found himself headed in the same direction.

He wouldn't be able to hear them if they got too far away, and for the first time, he hadn't considered this a good thing. Bella might not have said anything at school, but who knew what confidences a trip of bonding (read shopping) could inspire. Bella might yet spill the beans about him.

.

The next few hours were torturous. Horrendous. Concentrating on the five girls was indescribably painful on his reason. Humans, for all that they lived only a short while, spent a stupid about of time worrying about the inconsequential details of things. One colour was much the same as another, wouldn't effect anyone's opinion, wouldn't alter the course of events. One would think, that with such limited time as mortals were given, they'd try to make the most of it, they'd do as much as they could while they could.

They weren't unaware of their mortality, just seemingly indifferent.

Bella seemed just as eager to get away from their physical presence as he was their mental ones.

"Hey guys, I ordered a book that I need to pick up at the bookstore. Mind if I disappear for a few minutes?"

Amanda, the relatively level headed one of the other girls said, "Sure," then checked her watch. "Meet us in the food court at 7:30?"

"Great," Bella replied.

"Are you sure you'll be okay on your own?"

"I'll be fine," Bella assured, giving another one of her one arm shrugs. She had a jean jacked draped over shoulders, hiding the brace, so she looked somewhat normal. Still, she looked a bit off as she walked away from the group. It took him a moment to realize what was different about her. Edward always saw her with a backpack. She didn't carry one now, nor did she have a purse like the other girls. It made her appear... incomplete, in a way. "I'll see you in a bit."

Obviously, he couldn't follow Bella, and he certainly wasn't going to stay another minute in her friends' minds, so he withdrew from the scene, turned up Bach as loud as it would go in an ineffective effort to drown out all other sounds, and tried to enjoy his drive through the city. He'd check back in on them at 7:30.

It was silly of him, really, to try to force a confrontation, but he found himself at the bookstore all the same, evilly wondering how she would react. Another shouting fit and storming off? Would she see him, be frightened and run away? Would she apologize for making wild and insane accusations and forget the whole thing? Perhaps she had talked herself out of it. For all he knew she was embarrassed. Reason might have caught up with fear and prevailed. There were no such things as mind-readers, a sensible person like Bella would surely know that. She must be doubting herself now, especially since she had told no one else. She'd know that no one else would believe her. The idea was too outlandish.

Edward's confidence grew as he searched the store, but as he passed each shelf and searched the next mind, he didn't find her. She wasn't in the bookshop at all. The girl had lied to her friends... Interesting. As far back as he could remember, no one had even been able to get a lie past him, but now Bella could. That would make things... delightfully interesting. Provided she would ever speak to him again.

He left the bookstore and got back in his car. This time he kept his windows down to perhaps catch her scent.

Actually he saw her before he smelled her, not with his physical eyes but from the point of view of someone else. He didn't even see her face but he recognized her, that build, that stride. The man in whose mind he currently sat was eyeing her as she walked away. More than eyeing, actually. Scheming. Not alone either. He and his buddies were planning on having a good time.

Pushing his car into a higher gear he tore off in that direction. He zoomed past the men, still a good 100 meters away and pulled in next to the curb.

"Bella."

Upon hearing her name she turned around but when she saw it was he who had spoken she just glared and turned away from him again, storming off.

"Bella stop, just get in the car. It's dangerous for a girl on her own in this area at night. Let me give you a ride back to your friends."

"Go away Edward. I don't want or need you."

"Bella, listen, there is a group of men down there."

"It's a city. There are lots of people everywhere! So what?"

"You don't know the vile, repulsive things they are thinking."

She turned back gave him the most vitriolic smile he'd ever seen. "But of course _you_ _do_."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, so just get in the car."

"No."

"Bella, you aren't intending to walk half an hour by yourself at night downtown." The glower she sent him showed that that's _precisely_ what she intended. "Get in the car."

"I'm not getting in a car with you as a driver. In fact, I wouldn't get in a car with you, period. I'd rather take my chances with the possible rapists." And with that, the chit actually walked away!

Hell! The fool woman really _didn't_ have a sense of self-preservation! None at all! Fine, let her be violated and abused. Maybe that would teach her something about common sense, which she was clearly lacking.

He sat resolutely in his car, refusing to help the girl and just watched the scene unfold in his mind's eye as she walked away from him, turning at the next corner... into an alley and _not_ a public street because her stupidity knew no bounds. Not even the bimbos she'd left squawking over dresses would have made that sort of error in judgment.

They broke up into two groups at that point, going to box her in from both sides. Too bad for her. He'd given her a chance and she refused him. She had audibly admitted she'd have rapists over him. Well then, she'd get her wish. She'd made her bed, now she'd have to lie in it.

He'd known they had two guns among them, but he sat up straighter in his seat when one of them pulled it out and pointed it at her. He relaxed again when he learned from the man's mind that he didn't actually intend on shooting her, only scaring her into submission. He leaned back and shut his eyes, watching Bella's panicked face as they closed in around her, joking and jeering, the open laughter when they ripped the jacket off from where it draped over her shoulders and found the brace and sling. They hooted at that. Predators always sought out the weak and crippled. They were the easiest to take down.

She made a few futile attempts to run, and a few more at kicking her assailants. She made equally ineffective remarks, requests and reproaches. 'Let me go.' 'Bastards.' 'Don't touch me.' 'You're disgusting.' And other such trite phrases. If Edward weren't in such a foul mood, he'd have found it amusing. It reminded him vaguely of the first moving pictures, black and white numbers where the villain twiddles his mustache and rubs his hands together as he approaches the helpless female who mouths something soundlessly and a moment later the dialogue appears in the middle of the screen. 'Oh no! Don't come any closer! Oh who will save me?' All the while intense piano music was played by a performer in the theater. Edward himself had been one such piano player. He'd seen hundreds of those old films and there were only half a dozen different accompaniment pieces. His practiced fingers had played them so often he could repeat them now as easily as he could decades ago.

His nostalgia was brought short.

He rolled his eyes in exasperation when he heard from one's mind that he'd kill her _afterward_.

That was the one thing he couldn't allow. He groaned, wondering why on earth they had to go and make things more difficult for themselves... and him. He couldn't _not_ get involved now that her life was on the line. Grumbling at the girl's appalling luck and the men's deplorable judgment, he zoomed a few streets over and got out of his car. Really, these encounters _rarely_ ended in murder, of course _Bad Luck Bella_ would find just the one who would. His screeching halt got their attention, but when he got out of the car and slammed the door, all but one went back to what they were doing. Seeing it was only one person, and 'just a kid' at that, they weren't worried.

He didn't think human stupidity would ever cease to amaze and annoy him.

"You better get out of here boy and mind your own business," warned the sole fellow who'd bothered to deal with him. The one who hadn't had any intention of actually using the gun he wielded. This man was all bark.

Edward shook his head. "No, I saw her first. Go get your own."

The momentary confusion in the man's face was almost amusing.

"You heard correctly," Edward assured him. "That's _my_ kill. Back off."

When the man finally processed that information he said, "Well there are five of us, and one of you."

"Admirable arithmetic," he said with a fake yawn and started walking past.

"Hey!" The man swung a slow and clumsy fist (to Edward's perceptions anyway) at him and he dodged easily. He didn't actually touch him, but as he was artistically dodging a punch by ducking under the man's right arm, he darted by snatching up the semi-automatic as be went, his opponent completely unaware it had been lifted. Edward spent another few minutes dancing around the man's attack. It was a dull performance, to his mind. Unable to resist showing off just a _little_, he let the last punch strike him. The man's fist collided with his jaw with a very loud and satisfying _crunch._ Needless to say, the crunch came from the other man's fingers, not Edward's face, which hadn't so much as flinched at the contact.

After howling a swearword or two, holding his broken hand in the other he looked up at Edward, incredulous rage on his face. Edward just wriggled his eyebrows facetiously, and the man abandoned his mates and jogged off.

That left four others.

Edward hated fighting, he really did. It wasn't adverse to physical violence on principle (quite the opposite, as it so happened.) No, he disliked fighting because he never _really_ got to fight. Not only did he have to _not_ hit his opponent (any stroke from him and they'd never recover) but he also had to avoid being hit. One punch and the guy would know that Edward wasn't normal.

His skin didn't sparkle like diamonds nor was it hard like them either, so he wouldn't be discovered that way. Though impossible to break, to touch it was perfectly flesh like, if abnormally cold, but how could it be otherwise without a beating heart to pump blood and warmth through him. The paleness of it attributed to the same reason. Beneath his skin is what truly differentiated him from the rest. That implacable strength of his muscles and unbreakable skeleton.

If he were to truly fight, he'd be revealing himself as a monster. It wouldn't be a problem if he were to kill them afterwards, dead men tell no tales, but that meant he'd have to kill the other witnesses as well, including Bella. He toyed with the idea for a moment. Perhaps he'd just do it now. Really. He wouldn't be suspected. They were in another city, none of her friends knew he was there or that he'd come across her at all. If she went missing... well... who's to say she wouldn't have encountered some other criminal? She would have been killed anyway by this lot. At least this way she'd die with her virtue still in tact. So he was doing her a favour really. And it would solve that pesky problem of her knowing the truth about him.

He worked out the logistics in his head. Obviously the men would have to die first. He'd make it seem like a gang altercation ending in a shoot out, leaving everyone dead... Yes, that was it. Before anyone could realize what he was doing, Edward could shoot two with the weapon he had, then using the only other firearm in the group kill the remaining members. It would look like between the two gunmen, they'd shot each other and everyone else. People would hear the shots, naturally, but Bella wouldn't have had time to get away. He could simply pick her up take her somewhere else and feed.

One of the men cried out and stumbled back from Bella. How cute. She had pepper spray. And wasn't afraid to use it, apparently. She was quite trigger happy, spraying indiscriminately, consequently running out of the stuff before she actually managed to hit anyone else with it. Edward wanted to shake his head and make 'tsk'ing sounds. She really was an amusing creature in her way. She was a source of entertainment and distraction for him. Now that she hated and mistrusted him it would be an even greater challenge to lure her in but he figured saving her life would be a good way to rebuild. Besides, he'd made himself a challenge. Was he so weak as to give in, a year before his goal?

If he wavered at all, the matter was settled when she dropped another to his knees with a well aimed kick. She was worth keeping around for a while longer, at least. She, if nothing else, was a wonderful break from boredom.

First thing he did was to appropriate the firearm pointed at her. He was fast, but if the man pulled the trigger, Edward wasn't sure who would win the race to Bella, himself or the bullet. Even if he did manage to get her out of the way, people might ask questions. And by people, he meant Bella. If she could figure out he was a mind reader, he didn't doubt that she might notice other oddities about him if he let her observe them. She was already suspicious, demonstrating superhuman strength and speed would probably set her off again.

That being accomplished, he was confronted once again with the problem of getting her away from the men without coming to fisticuffs. He realized he had a perfectly simple method, it had only taken him a moment to think of such human recourse. Pointing the weapon toward them, and feeling very much like a character in one of those old films, he told them to leave. He refused to go further into the role and start speech making. He rather thought that the business end of a gun barrel would sufficiently get the message across.

And it did. Once they realized that they had been disarmed, they dispersed, leaving a panting Bella slumped against the wall, staring at him incredulously.

"You carry a gun?" was the first breathless thing out of her mouth.

He shook his head. "No, that was theirs. I was just borrowing it." He chucked both of them in a nearby trashcan.

Taking her elbow he began dragging her to his car and for a moment, she simply let herself be tugged along.

_For a moment._

He'd open the passenger side door for her when she jerked out of his grasp.

"What?" he asked.

She didn't answer, only stood there, glaring. Finally, after almost a minute of waiting he just got tired of it and snapped, "Christ's sake, would you just say something?"

"I have been," she spat back petulantly. "Why should I bother saying anything aloud when you can just read my mind?"

He frowned. That she would focus on _that _at a time like _this _said something. And Edward wasn't sure what. It grated his nerves and he hated to admit that he'd been one upped by a _human_ but at last he ground out through clenched teeth, "_I. Can't._"

"What?"

"I can't hear what you are thinking, you blocked me out," he said bitterly. "Rather painfully, I might add."

The look of surprise was soon replaced with satisfaction. "Good! You deserve all the pain you get!"

"Yes, I'm a terrible person and I deserve a lingering painful death, but if you don't get in the car and let me drive you back to your friends then those guys will find you again and we'll have to repeat this entire process in another quarter of an hour." She looked back in that direction nervously. Her current tantrum aside, she was still very shaken from her attack. Perhaps it was easier to be angry than overwhelmingly afraid. "I can have you across town in five minutes," he soothed.

Her eyes went wide, and if possible, even angrier.

"By dad died in a car wreck, _Edward_!" She spat out his name with all the seeming hatred she possessed.

"I know that," he stated laconically, shrugging.

"If you knew then why did you always insist on driving so fast? Did you enjoy it? Is that what you do? Eavesdrop on people's thoughts, find out what they fear and go off and do it? Does that amuse you?" Her eyes were rolling wildly in her head, she looked almost rabid. "You know what? You're sick, you know that?"

Actually he had never thought about it that way before. Sure he'd seen in her thoughts the accident, but he never connected it with her fear of his driving. He was a safe driver, he'd never let his car come to harm. Still, the girl didn't seem to grasp that concept. Rolling his eyes, he slammed the car door and locked it with the remote.

"What?" she asked as he continued to glare at her.

"Well if you won't get in the car, we'll have to _walk_ back," he answered, not at all pleased by the idea. Walking was so _slow_, not that he was ever pressed for time but having to confine himself to a snail's pace was tedious beyond words.

In the moments that followed Bella considered him. He deduced that she was performing some kind of test to see if he really couldn't read her thoughts. No doubt she was thinking who-knew-what to try to see evidence of it on his face. He must have looked sufficiently unaffected for her face softened, almost disbelievingly. "You really _can't_ hear me..."

He ripped his eyes off of her and stared angrily ahead of him and started walking. "No," he said, still rankled by this fact. "You pushed me out."

"I didn't know that was possible."

"Neither did I, until you did it."

"So... you can really read minds..." she said, as if only just allowing herself to truly accept it. By the sound of her voice it was clear that she felt silly for even saying it, much less believing it. She hurried her steps to walk beside him. She was going with him at least, probably only because now her curiosity was getting the better of her. "I suppose that explains your distancing people. It must get annoying, hearing that all the time."

He stopped and looked at her. He shouldn't have been surprised that she'd understood so well, but he was all the same. "Yes," he replied with utmost sincerity. Suddenly, he didn't feel so irritated. Thoughts of devouring her in an alley vanished in light of someone actually understanding what he had to put up with day after day. It was as if he were seeing her in a new light. "You are actually very easy to be around," he admitted. Well, easy to be around when she wasn't doing something entirely dim-witted.

"Not always, you could still read my mind before," she said accusatorily. So she was still angry for all the times he _had_ read her mind. Well, he couldn't blame her for that, only be thankful that she didn't know just how often that was. Her temper seemed to be swinging back and forth like a pendulum, furious one moment, understanding the next, then the temper was in full force again.

"You know your mood swings are giving me whiplash," he told her. He didn't expect an apology or explanation or anything other than unimpressed look he received, so he continued. "You were blocking long before you tried. As you said though, not always," he allowed as contritely as he could manage to sound, which wasn't much. "What I did hear was..." He searched for a word that would neither insult nor disturb her. "Refreshing."

She lifted one eyebrow skeptically but he didn't elucidate, merely offered her an arm. After a moment's hesitation she linked it with her own and they began walking down the street together.

It was silent for several minutes. Silent in terms of conversation anyway but the rest of the town still roared around them, the thoughts of thousands of people still buzzed in his head but somehow all he really noticed was the quiet between the two of them. After a long time, during which she was no doubt processing a lot of information she had been denying before, she asked, "Why don't you use that ability to help people?"

"Why should I?" he returned.

"Why?" she asked incredulously. "To do some real good in the world!"

Rather than explain that doing good, for all intents and purposes, went against his nature, he settled for a truth that would put her off all the same. "Who would believe me? Not like a local police office is going to believe the words of a guy who says they should arrest someone because he could read their minds..."

"Oh..." She frowned. "You could make money. Go to Vegas or something."

"Because I'd love all that attention?" he said sarcastically. "Bella I thought you knew me better."

"Right," she said sheepishly. "I suppose your name in bright neon lights isn't exactly subtle enough for you." Edward pursed his lips, not at the luridness of that repulsive image, nor at the fact that he already felt that he was in the spotlight because of that travesty of a vampire book. No, it was to stop himself from grinning. "I suppose a tiny town with fewer people would be easier to bear than a teeming metropolis."

That was true, certainly, but there were other reasons for his choosing the Pacific Northwest over _sunny_ Las Vegas.

"You are grasping this rather well." '_Especially considering she'd just been assaulted.' _He knew she'd break at some point. Perhaps if he was lucky it would be after he got her back to her friends. He had planned on appealing to her sympathetic nature, and asking her for help with something, so that she would invest herself in him, rather than the other way around. At the time he had thought he'd need to come up with a specious need, but now that part of the truth was out there, he didn't have to invent one. She was the only living or non living being who knew his secret. One less lie he'd have to keep track of. One more truth he'd have to watch out for. "If I'd have known I might have told you sooner."

"You didn't tell me at all," she pointed out severely. "I found out. And I didn't exactly take it well either. I was going to move, you know. Just because of you. After exams I was just going to go back to New Mexico. The thought of you being inside my head bothered me that badly. I couldn't sleep, I was so freaked out. I knew I couldn't be around you for another year knowing I'd have zero privacy. I wanted to shout it to everyone, warn them that you were listening on their thoughts, but I just couldn't actually bring myself to say it aloud."

"Believe me, it's not like that. I spend all my waking moments trying to tune the world out. It has it's uses upon occasion, I will admit that, but I wouldn't consider the constant headache worth it."

"Is that why you don't sleep?" she asked sincerely.

"I..." He stopped, thinking for a moment. "I don't know." He didn't, at that. He'd assumed that it had to do with his being a vampire, but he'd never consulted with other vampires about their sleeping habits. It might just be him, now that he considered the matter.

The walked for another few minutes without conversing before another question burst from her, clearly one she'd been desperate to ask.

"Is it true? Are your parents really dead or did you just say that because you knew mine were too?"

"They really are, I assure you." _And have been for half a century._

"Oh."

Thinking to prevent her from asking more questions along those lines, he said, "Don't you have a book to pick up?"

She smiled and shook her head. "I lied."

"Oh." This pleased him enormously. Not that she'd told her friends a falsehood, but that he had no means of detecting it. It added blessed mystery into his life. Most people feared the unknown. On top of being practically indestructible, he had nothing to fear, because nothing was hidden from him. Except the mind of one girl. Now she would be a _true_ challenge to overcome. He didn't have his usual advantage. The mind games could go both ways.

This time the silence stretched until they made it all the way back to the food court where her friends would soon be arriving to meet her.

"You didn't have to walk with me, you know," she said. He was sure this was just polite reflex and he speedily stamped on her civility, because it _had_ been necessary, and he wanted her to know she'd put him out.

"Well you were being too stupid to get in the car. You didn't leave me any other non-pedestrian option."

She blushed. "Alright I deserved that," she said stepping off the escalator. "But really. You didn't have to help me, but you did... and I—"

He cut her off. "They were going to kill you, Bella," he said matter-of-factly. She was about to make some sort of protest, or to tell him he was exaggerating but he stopped her with a steady stare and tapped his temple. "I know, remember?"

That's when it all seemed to sink in and it finally hit. She trembled, paled, swayed on the spot. He took a step forward to catch her if she fainted but she didn't. Instead she stumbled forward and clutched at his shirt, and began crying against his chest, no doubt too distracted to notice he was abnormally cool. He had been wondering when that was going to happen, and had hoped he wouldn't be around when it did, but luck didn't seem to be on his side that evening.

He knew that had she not just been through a harrowing ordeal, she wouldn't be clinging to him so desperately. Which was fine because he wasn't ecstatic about it either. He wouldn't want her to make a habit of leaking on him. Only in effort to end it as soon as possible did he pat her back consolingly.

"There there. Be a big girl now," he whispered, not to be comforting, but so that the other people around them who were looking openly, wouldn't hear his ridiculous words. "Come on. No more tears now." He glared at a passerby who was gaping at the sobbing girl, making unfounded suppositions as to why she was crying. "Bella," he said firmly, but quietly. "You're alright, girl. You are alright. Safe as can be now." He led her to the nearest line to one of the many restaurants in the food court and told her to order something. "You need to eat."

She controlled her shuddering breath and, hiccoughing slightly, asked simply for an order of fries. They stood at the other side of the counter waiting for it to be ready. By that time she'd stopped weeping, but she shivered as if being bit by an icy wind. An embrace from him wouldn't help her on that score, so he didn't offer one.

She revived a bit after mechanically chewing and swallowing half the fried potatoes.

"Sorry about that. I don't know what came over me," she apologized.

"Better now?"

She nodded and munched on another fry. "Thanks," she said, half the thing still sticking out of her mouth.

She finished it and they continued to sit in a strange perversion of what one might have usually deemed 'companionable silence.' Edward checked for the third time if it were 7:30 yet. Almost.

"Edward?" she said finally, in a very uncertain voice.

"Hmm?"

"How did you know where I was if you can't read my mind?"

"Say 'hear thoughts' rather than 'read minds.' 'Reading minds makes it seem like I have a choice in the matter."

"You didn't answer my question," she pointed out astutely, her voice more confident.

"I come here most weekends," he remarked casually. "Just like when _you_ hear someone speak aloud, I am naturally more aware of people's mental voices I know. So when I heard Kacey, and Mary-Anne, it was hard not to know you were here."

"But I left them. How did you know where I was? How did you know I wasn't at the bookstore?"

"You think it so unlikely that I might have taken a friendly concern?"

She frowned in response and Edward grinned at her skepticism.

"Violent thoughts are generally harder to miss. I found you by chance in their minds and thought I might stop by and give you a hand."

Edward was awaiting the inevitable 'thank you' that he'd grown accustomed to with the girl and was startled when she said instead, "That was stupid, you know."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said that was stupid. Coming after a group of men on your own."

It was his turn to frown. "So was walking right into them after I expressly warned you not to. It could have all been prevented if you had just listened to me to begin with," he told her sternly.

She was prevented from replying openly by the arrival of her group. She gave him a look that, for the first time to his memory, he couldn't decipher. She was clearly trying to communicate _something_ but damned if he knew what it was.

Before any of the other girls had time to speak or jump to any hasty conclusions, Edward explained, "I was just passing by when I saw her sitting by herself, so I kept her company until you arrived. I really should be going now though. Have a nice night."

And with that he made his ungracious retreat. The girls waited until he had just disappeared from sight before unleashing a barrage of questions about her time with him.

"Really, I'd been sitting for maybe a minute before he arrived, and then you guys showed up a minute after that. He asked how exam preparations were coming, I said fine, asked him how his studying was going and he said fine too, and that's all there was to it."

The girls were far from appeased and the conversation about his not so humble self continued.

Bella didn't seem too keen on the conversation. In fact, she looked completely uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly in her seat as she made a few attempts to change the subject which went ignored. One girl made a comment about how he looked so good he could belong in Hollywood, and Bella grumbled aloud, but amusedly so under her breath, "I hope you heard that, you subtle bastard."

"What?" asked Kacey, perplexed.

"Nothing," she replied. Edward grinned, knowing the message was for him. She knew damned well how little he'd care for the scenario.

.

The road was a small one, only two lanes, one for each direction of traffic, the solid double line in the middle indicating no passing. They had made their purchases, and Edward had actually made a nice enough killing at the outskirts of the town while they did. Heading back to the city behind them, he approached the girls' car which was going an appalling 55 miles per hour. He flashed his brights at them to get them to speed up.

"What the hell does he want?" asked Amanda, the driver. "He's tailgating the hell out of me."

The girls in the backseat, including Bella, turned around to look at the offending car, his. Since the other girls weren't looking at Bella, he couldn't tell if she recognized his car. The others didn't, that he could tell. Growing wearing of waiting, he raced passed them, swerving into the opposite lane to pass them, narrowly missing an oncoming truck. He heard the driver's loud and violent cursing. Amanda yelled less than generous things as well at being abruptly cut off.

Bella _did_ recognize him. "You bastard, you're going to get yourself killed one of these days, driving like that," said Bella disapprovingly, then whispered, "Why can't you just drive more safely?" He honked his horn in response, to show her that he'd heard, and then sped ahead to likewise show what he thought of her suggestion. He'd drive however he damned-well pleased.

.

At first he'd been overly kind and attentive, the progress he made was slow and little. It wasn't difficult, the pretense of politeness, he did it everyday of his life after all. But he could be more or less himself around her and get further along, he realized. It was Monday during lunch, and for the first time since she'd started going there, they both sat in the cafeteria. As she nibbled on her food he whispered, so that only she could hear, a continuous commentary of the other occupants of the room, several of whom were wondering as to why he and Bella were sitting together alone. He didn't share this with her though.

"And O'Malley has to piss, but he doesn't want to lose his spot at his table..."

"Edward stop. Isn't that... an invasion of privacy?"

"Yes. So?"

"Well, _you_ can't help it but _I_ don't want to intrude."

"Think of it as helping me, sharing my pain, easing the burden. Come on it'll be fun. Guess what Kacy is thinking right now."

"I have no idea."

"Guess."

Bella sighed, glanced over at the girl and said, "Her diet?"

Edward frowned. "Beginner's luck. How about Amanda?"

It pleased him that she got that one, and the following four, entirely wrong.

"How long have you been able to do this?" she asked, growing tired of his game.

"Forever," he replied curtly.

"How does it work?"

He shrugged. "People think and I hear. If I want to pay attention to one person in particular I can see what they see."

"How far is your range?"

"You are just full of questions, aren't you?" he commented. She just continued to look at him, still expecting an answer. He shrugged again. "Too far. Several miles. More, if I'm concentrating." He had needed to concentrate intensely in order to reach her house from his apartment in town. The time he'd spent at her place while she was concussed had been close to sanctuary, he didn't hear anyone other than her and the occasional people as they drove down the road.

He stood, taking his tray with him. "Your friends are going to come over here for an interrogation. Stay if you want."

"What will they ask?"

"Isn't that an invasion of privacy?" he asked wryly.

"I just want to be prepared."

Edward rolled his eyes. "They half hope, half dread we are having a torrid affair," he told her. "Tell them whatever you please, so long as you keep them away from me." He walked off, depositing his empty tray in the rack and pitilessly left her to the vultures.

"Was that Edward Cullen who just left?" one asked.

"Yes. We're having a torrid affair," she deadpanned. Although he had authorized such a remark, he hadn't expected her to actually go through with it. Her tones had been so obviously sarcastic and indicative that she knew what the other girls were hinting at, that they cut off their interrogation immediately, ashamed.

Yes, the girl would prove to be an admirable diversion.


	8. An Interesting Development or Two

**Chapter Eight: An Interesting Development**

"Edward, shut up," Bella groaned. "I have to study... and if you keep distracting me I will kick you out." She flipped several pages in a book with such frustration that she nearly tore a sheet right out of the text. This annoyed her further and she let out a yowl and slammed the book shut.

He regarded her patiently. "You need a break."

"No, I _need_ to study," she said frantically, pulling another book in front of her and opening it furiously.

"_No_. You _want_ to study. And you'll be better able to do it if you when you aren't so raw. Take a break for half an hour. Relax. Your books will still be there when you return, and you'll be in better form to give them their due attention."

Bella stopped fidgeting and sighed before looking up at him. "Why do you talk like that?"

"What, sensibly?"

"Like from you're from another time," she clarified.

He stiffened imperceptibly. "Because I suppose logic has gone out of style..." he returned with a sneer, mentally cursing her for her perception and himself for his indiscretion.

"It's because you spend more time reading literature than talking to actual people," Bella surmised.

"Books make for better company."

Bella's chin rose. "Agreed. So leave so I can get back to mine."

Edward shrugged and put his hands in his pockets and ambled out of Bella's kitchen to the living room. He glanced over the television, the fish on the wall, the sofa and chairs. He continued through it, making his way into the hall. Down it and across was room, the door closed but unlocked. He'd seen it before, had looked in at the frightful mess within and left again. He entered now, more out of a lack for anything better to do than a genuine curiosity.

This was the room least frequented, that was obvious. This was the room where boxes were placed because they weren't fit to go anywhere else. Old chairs, paintings that weren't seen fit to hang in the house proper, pieces of junk and other things that were no doubt well meant Christmas or birthday gifts that simply weren't loved or appreciated enough to be cherished, but couldn't be thrown away. That seemed to be the theme of the entire room. Things that were to be kept, but not remembered. Everything was covered in a layer of dust, including the old piano, which was piled with more folders, boxes, old toys, and a broken tackle box. He cleared everything off the bench and sat, only to find that the pedals were blocked but yet more boxes. He shoved those aside too and opened the instrument, letting his fingers run over the keys without pressing down on them.

The silence was delectable. Apart from his own fingers over the keys and Bella's breathing in the next room, and of course the gentle patter of the ever present rain outside, there were no sounds. Her house was just far enough away from either town that he didn't hear anyone's thoughts. If he were to play, there would be nothing but music in his ears and mind. Music had always been a solace of sorts, but this... this was something extraordinary. Edward sincerely hoped the instrument was tuned.

In this room, in this house, he could play as slowly and softly as he wanted, and not have to use the piano itself to try to drown out everything else. Carefully, gingerly, he began the funereal beginning of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, _pianissimo_. As he continued his ears picked up Bella moving through the house, trying to tread silently. He remembered from the time he had spent in her head that this particular piece was one of her favourites. Strangely, the squeak of floorboards under her feet didn't bother him. Rather, it seemed to add something the tune.

When he finished he turned around to look at her. She didn't seem startled that he knew she was there. Her pulsing scent in the staid still room seemed all the sweeter for the utter stillness around her. She was the only edible within miles, and yet he couldn't eat her... yet. Edward thought he might be growing more sensitive to her scent. Through no merit of its own, it grew more delectable to him, simply because he was teasing himself with her.

"Nice one, maestro."

"Thank you," he replied courteously, standing up from the bench.

Bella hastily extended a hand, palm out and fingers splayed. "No!" She seemed to recover herself and looked down, a bit embarrassed. "Don't stop," she whispered.

"What about your precious studying?" he sneered mockingly. "I thought I was just distracting you from your books."

She looked up, an expression that was some bastard breed between a glare and a smile. "You know something Mr. Cullen, there is something seriously wanting in your people skills."

"You liked me better as your silent lunch time reading companion?" he asked in the exact same tone of voice as before, although secretly it was an earnest question.

Bella took a moment to consider him, but didn't answer. She simply raised an eyebrow.

He frowned at her. "Debussy or Liszt?" he asked sourly, and her mouth broke out into a full toothy smile.

.

"Bella you're driving me mad, sit down and relax!" Edward growled. "It's just an exam."

"_Just _an _**exam**_?!" she cried. "Edward, if I don't do well on this then how the hell am I supposed to get into college?"

His eyebrows rose slightly. Bella rarely swore aloud and her doing so now was causing a scene. They were waiting in the hallway to the room in which they'd take their only remaining exam, Biology. She'd made similar scenes before her other exams but this one, perhaps because it was the last of the lot, seemed to distress her most.

Thinking that saying 'Don't worry, you won't live to see college so really, these exams don't matter either way,' wouldn't soothe her any, he simply told her, "You know this stuff. I know you know it."

"What if I fail?" Her hands were trembling with worry and her eyes looked as they might soon fill with nervous tears. He ruthlessly gripped her by the shoulders, tired of her anxiety.

"Repeat after me, Isabella. _I have studied well for this exam._"

"I have studied well for this exam."

"_I am prepared to take this exam._" She shook her head but he glared and gripped harder. "Say it."

"I am prepared to take this exam," she repeated obediently.

"_I am going to do well on this exam._"

"I am going to do well on this exam."

He nodded and let her go, seeing that she was breathing steadily and a rational human being once again.

"Will you quiz me one more time?" she asked tentatively.

He sighed dramatically. "Yes, alright."

The exam was, of course, entirely simple and once they had finished, Bella was in much better spirits. They walked out to the parking lot arm in arm, her bouncing on her toes as she walked contrasting with his firm, sober stride. Clearly she was elated to have finished her junior year of high school. He'd finished his junior year a dozen times, and he'd found the experience dulled with repetition.

"_Ah, Cullen!_" someone thought. The mental voice was that of Daniel Orvis. Edward hoped to avoid the invitation, but unless he could convince Bella to bolt to his car, the quarterback would catch up with them.

"Iz! Cullen!" Bella stopped and turned around and Edward, perforce, did too. The boy noticed this but didn't jump to any conclusions as so many others had.

"Hey Dan," Bella greeted cheerfully.

"Hey guys. Glad I caught you. I'm having an after-prom party at my place, and you both should come."

"Oh. I'm not going to prom," Bella replied, sounding slightly sad, but perhaps it was just her feeling guilty at turning down such a well meant invitation.

"You can still come to the party," he persisted, positively glowing. No doubt he was glad to been finished with high school. Lucky bastard, thought Edward. _He_ would _never_ be finished with high school.

"Erm..." Bella looked at Edward with an uncertain pleading. _Bet you wish I could read your mind now..._

He gave it a go anyway, risking misinterpreting her. "Actually we were going to Seattle for the weekend," he remarked casually. "We're having our own anti-prom party."

'_I guess the rumours are true. They _are_ together then. Good for him. Never saw him as the romantic type.' _"You really have _no_ school spirit, do you Cullen?"

"Not one iota," he affirmed proudly, then added to Bella, "Shall we?" With that he led her away, walking her almost forcefully through the parking lot so that she could only crane her neck behind her to bid Orvis farewell.

"He was being nothing but nice to you, and yet you were so rude."

Edward smirked. "He likes me well enough. My insolence amuses him."

"You're talking like a book again."

He rolled his eyes and snatched her bag from her to fling it into the backseat of his Volvo. "Get in."

.

They _didn't _go to Seattle. Edward actually had to work that night and Bella, well, he had no idea what she may or may not have done. She didn't tell him and he had no other way of knowing. She'd called him a week later wondering if he was going to graduation. He wasn't, of course.

That had been three weeks ago. Only three weeks and yet he missed...

No.

He did not _miss_ anyone. It wasn't the right word at all. He was... _less amused _without Bella. He didn't enjoy himself when she wasn't around to bother.

He was sitting on the wooden stool in front of the sorry excuse for a piano that was his electronic keyboard, wishing that he had a real instrument to play on when it occurred to him. Surely his inaction with Bella would retard the improvement he was making on that front. He shouldn't, therefore, allow himself to be away from her for too long.

Thinking he'd kill two birds with one stone, as the saying had it, he firmly decided to visit her... and not coincidentally, her piano as well.

He was more than half-way there when he remembered that she'd expect any visitor to arrive at her house, miles into nowhere, to come by car. So he had to backtrack and take the Volvo.

Edward was surprised when Bella shouted "Come on in!" upon hearing him knock and again, couldn't help but notice that the girl herself was her own biggest safety hazard. He strolled in, in any case.

"And what if you just welcomed a killer into your house?" he asked. Bella gasped and turned around on the couch where she was reading.

"Edward!"

"When you invite any and all people into your home without bothering to check who they are you can be guaranteed a few surprises," he told her reprovingly.

She blinked at him and shook her head quickly to clear away the stupefaction. "Sorry, I... I was expecting someone... _else_."

"Oh? Have I come at a bad time?" He asked needlessly. He could tell already from the thoughts of her approaching friend hat she was expecting company.

"No," was her immediate response but then she looked down at her feet guiltily. "Well actually..."

He held up a hand. "Say no more. I'll leave. Truth is, I just came by to beg a half hour with your piano."

Her face lightened. "Oh, well I was going to a movie but you are welcome to stay and play to your heart's content," she offered.

"Stay here while you're away? What if I rob the place?"

"I trust you."

He shook his head and made 'tsk'ing sounds. "You shouldn't."

She laughed as if this was some sort of joke. "No, I probably shouldn't. The offer still stands though."

"Bella!" came a deeply male voice from the door as it opened _sans_ knock. The face was one Edward recognized, but only through Bella's memories. This was her friend Jacob. Her tall, dark skinned, dark haired, well featured friend Jacob.

The moment he and the boy laid eyes on each other he felt an immediate jolt of the strongest antipathy Edward had ever experienced. The newcomer's thoughts, which he had read several times in the past, were now not translatable in words of any language. It was like reading the mind of an animal or something. '_Raised hackles_' was the closest thing he could think of that could accurately describe the boy's mind at that moment, and something ineffable told Edward it wasn't just simple jealousy. This was a deeply personal dislike that had little or nothing to do with Bella, and damned if he knew what it was. He could tell that the boy himself didn't know either.

Edward had never felt anything so powerful before, save from the overpowering one-mindedness of thirst during a hunt. Apart from that, this was the purest, strongest _emotion_ he'd ever felt. Everything else, the boredom and the annoyance of the little day to day things paled in comparison to this veritable fountain of hate that had seem to spring up in him.

Bella's voice broke them both out of their intense staring. "Erm... Edward this is my oldest friend in the world, Jacob. Jake, this is Edward Cullen. He goes to school with me."

Not willing to be openly (and what would doubtlessly seem unreasonably) hostile to one another, Jacob put out his hand and Edward, like a gentleman, shook it...

Only a second passed before they both hastily jerked their hands away. The boy was practically a furnace. Edward wouldn't have gone so far as to say it hurt, but the heat, the shocking heat of this human, was decidedly uncomfortable. It burned, not at all like how the sun burned, but the temperature was intense all the same. Much higher than the perfectly desirable 98.6 degrees. Perhaps had he been warned, had he been expecting it he wouldn't have reacted so instinctively and pulled away. But Jacob did too. No doubt Edward's coldness was just as unnerving to _him_.

Recovering himself before her friend could, Edward intoned, politely as he possibly could under the circumstances, "Nice to meet you, Jacob."

The boy clenched and then unclenched his jaw, nodding. "Edward."

Bella wasn't oblivious to the tension in the room and seemed to be in a hurry to end it.

"Well Jake, we'd better go," she said, taking his arm and leading him to the door.

"Wait, you're going to just leave him here?" he asked suspiciously, casting his eyes and aspersions towards Edward.

"Yeah. He's going to tune the piano while I'm gone," Bella answered, assuming that this was a better excuse than the truth.

"Why do you need someone to tune the piano, you don't even play anymore."

"I was thinking of taking it up again. Remember? I told you last week I might do music next year?"

Jacob's mistrusting glance didn't leave Edward's face. "Yeah... yeah I remember. Lucky you just happen to personally know a piano tuner when you suddenly decide yours needs tuning." His accusation was buried under a fake smile of large white powerful teeth, almost as powerful and white as Edwards'.

"Right," said Bella awkwardly, looking between both of them uncertainly. "Well we'd better go. Don't want to be late."

Jacob seemed to mentally growl at him, but eventually broke the eye contact and let Bella lead him out.

"Oh, and lock the door behind you if you leave before I get back," she called back to him.

"Will do," he assured. And with that the door slammed shut.

No longer in direct proximity, Edward could hear the boy's thoughts again.

"Who the hell was that?" he asked Bella.

"Edward. I told you."

"Who the hell is Edward?"

"He's the one who pushed me out of the way of the van."

"So he's the one who did this, then?" he asked heatedly, pointing to her brace and sling with one arm as he opened the car door with the other.

Bella frowned but got in, waiting until Jacob walked around and situated himself in the driver's seat. "He saved my life, Jake."

"I don't like him."

"You don't even _know_ him."

"And I don't want to. He creeps me out."

"Just... stop. Stop insulting him, stop talking about him, stop _thinking _about him. Just put him out of your mind, think of something else," she said quickly. No doubt she was worried that he was eavesdropping on her friend's thoughts, and rightly so. If she was trying to spare Edward from hearing mean things about him, she needn't bother. He'd heard it all before.

"No, I'm serious. Something's really wrong with him."

"Jake, stop."

"And he's freakishly cold. Like a dead fish or something."

Bella growled. "Can we talk about something else please? I refuse to discuss it now," she said, then added in a whisper. "I _still_ don't have any privacy, do I?" She rubbed her head exasperatedly, as if she had a headache.

_Ah ha. So it's hers and her friend's privacy of mind she's trying to preserve. As if I actually care what he thinks. As she said, I saved her life, she owes me. And I will collect that debt one day..._

"What do you mean, privacy? It's just us."

"Forget it. So what movie do you want to see?"

"That was a really pathetic attempt to change the topic, Bells," he pointed out.

"Humour me?" she asked hopefully.

Jacob rolled his eyes and sighed, but capitulated nonetheless. In words, if not in thought...

.

Once they drove out of range, he sat down at the piano. It wasn't out of tune, not really. Perhaps a tweak here and there wouldn't go amiss but on the whole it was an instrument in fine condition, for all that it was covered with dust. He did a bit of improvisation and composition. In fact, he was rather proud of the piece he'd been working on. He'd been so involved he lost track of time. Three hours he must have been at it, the sky had darkened slightly and he heard their thoughts approaching long before he heard the car. Time enough to pop in his Volvo and drive it a bit away so it wouldn't be seen by the house and then dash back in.

If the boy Jacob thought Edward wasn't around, he was more likely to leave.

He sat in what had once been her father's room, waiting until it was safe to descend. This was delayed because he wasn't expecting the new development the first words out of Jacob's mouth put forth.

"He's still here. I can smell him..."

_He can __**smell**__ me? What kind of freak is he?_ Edward was aware, but uncaring of the hypocrisy. Humans didn't have a good enough sense of smell to detect that sort of thing and the living boiler was unquestionably _not_ a vampire. What else was left? Nothing he'd heard of before, that was for certain.

"Stop being dramatic. You can't _smell_ him," Bella put in reasonably.

"He's. Here," the who-knew-what repeated.

"You're being ridiculous."

It took another few minutes for them to wind down their argument and get the thing to leave, but eventually she managed. The front door closed again, and he heard Bella sigh from the kitchen, then fill up a cup of water from the sink.

"He was right you know," he remarked from the doorway.

She let out a short shrill shriek of surprise, dropping her glass, which shattered on the tiles, spreading shards and water across the floor. After clutching her heart and taking several deep breaths calmed down again. Edward rolled his eyes.

"Oh hell, Belle, now he's coming back. He heard that. Tell him... I don't know. Tell him you saw an insect that startled you or something." He disappeared up the stairs again.

"Bella! You alright?" Jacob called from the front door as he barreled in.

"It's nothing," she replied. "Saw a spider. I'm fine. Sorry to worry you. I'll see you later Jake."

Another minor squabble later and the boy left the house again, hopefully for good.

"Your friend is an odd one," he told her.

"I don't need to tell you he feels the same way."

"No, indeed you don't. But what I _don't_ know is why. Obviously he knew something was off about me, but we both know what that is," he lied. Let her think he only had one abnormality. "But we don't know what his defect is." He looked at her speculatively. "Or do we?"

"I don't know anything."

"Nothing? Nothing about..." He affected what he considered a 'Bella-like' voice. "'_My oldest friend in the world Jacob,'_?"

Edward's mind was half in the conversation, half following the topic of their conversation as he left Bella's house. '_I can still smell him. He's around here somewhere. Can I change?'_ Jacob looked around making sure no one could see and then...

Edward, who wasn't even human himself, had difficulty believing what he saw. The boy stripped down, tied up his clothes to a cloth round his leg and transformed into some sort of over-large canine and sprinted off towards where his car was parked.

_And I thought I was the freak_, Edward thought, amused.

"Edward? Edward what is it?"

Edward snapped back into his own body, which was standing in Bella's kitchen next to the girl herself. "Sorry," he apologized. "Lost in thought."

"Yours? Or someone else's?" she asked wryly, though the disapproval was plain. He grinned back.

"I just learned his secret. Want to know what it is?"

"No!" she said loudly, but she was only able to mask her curiosity for a few seconds before it began to make itself visible on her face.

His wheedling only made her more resolute. "No," she repeated firmly. "If he wants to tell me he will. Everyone should be allowed to have their secrets..." There was an obvious point there that didn't even need making, so she didn't.

He couldn't stop smiling, which unnerved Bella to the point where she almost started crying.

"This is just too delicious. I have to tell you. If you thought _I _had an interesting ability..."

"No! Edward, I swear if you tell me his secret, I'm telling him yours."

_But you don't know the half of it, my sweet._

"Fine. Suit yourself. I'll see you later. I... I've got to see a man about a dog."

"Leave Jacob alone!"

How could he possibly leave him alone? This was the best thing that ever happened to him. Some part of him, something deep within him knew that he, and whatever creature this boy was, were fundamental enemies. Up until that point, he'd had none. He was the top of the food chain, no question. The only natural predator of humans, immortal, unbeatable. Now... _now_ he might have a challenge. Not some silly self-imposed one either.

It was all arrogance than made him think that he would still be the victor. All that he'd seen was that the boy could change into an animal. Even with those advantages of heightened senses and speed, Edward should have no trouble defeating him. But he wouldn't be too hasty. He'd observe for a while, find out as much about his new-found enemy as he could before we went for the kill. And she wanted him to leave this wonderful discovery alone?

"As you wish, of course," he told her, his face a solemn and sincere as could be.

"Thanks Edward," she said. Trying, but not succeeding to smile at him.

He nodded his head and left, locking the door behind him.

_Now where has the beastie gone?_

.

The following week, Edward and Black tracked each other, dancing around where the other had been but never actually meeting face to face, or face to muzzle, rather. Both knew that the other was following him. Edward had sat on the wolf's roof, watched his friends and family go about on the reservation. Their scents were all diluted versions of his, of that disgusting, nearly undrinkable smelling blood. Jacob followed Edward too, watching where he went, where he lived, even inspected his car. Edward had been careful to take his car wherever he went, even if it was a short distance of a few miles. Nor did he hunt at all that week, because he suspected Big Furry would pick up on it, even if it was out of town and beyond his territory. Finally, Edward decided to make the first move, a strategic but, alas, non-violent maneuver that would, he hoped, put him one up over the mutt.

He knew that Black could smell him approach, and was therefore prepared when he appeared in the shop.

"I come in peace," he said sarcastically as he strolled into the dingy car repair garage where the boy worked.

Black snorted. "Right. I take it you aren't here for parts for that shiny Volvo?"

"You'd know that can't be it. You've already peeked under the hood."

"Your oil is getting low."

"Get a quart then."

He nodded curtly and took three strides to cross the tiny shop, plucked a bottle off the shelf and came back with it.

"Anything else?" Still the only thing he got while in the presence of the wolf-boy was that 'raised hackles' vibe. Jacob might be acting calm and insolently polite, but Edward could tell he was on guard.

"No, that's it. I've promised Bella I'd leave you alone, see." He slid some cash onto the counter.

Black's eyes narrowed suspiciously. '_If that were true then why has he been following me?'_ he thought. Edward answered this unvoiced question with casual indifference.

"I've come to tell you it's over."

"With Bella?" the boy asked hopefully. Edward frowned.

"With you, you lack-wit," he said, taking the paper sack with the quart of oil. "Keep the change. You won't be seeing me again."

Black snorted, and pushed his long hair behind his ear in an over-dramatic 'whatever' gesture. Edward looked up in feigned shock.

"Why grandma, what big ears you have!" he said, then snorted in amusement. "All the better to hear me with, is it?" Edward simply couldn't resist the big bad wolf reference, though he was hardly a defenseless little girl in a red cape.

With a triumphant swagger, he turned around and left the shop.

Yes, that felt good. What added to the beautiful victory was Black's panicked thoughts after he left. They were along the lines of _'He knows what I am, and I have no idea what the hell he might be.'_

Edward wanted to throw his head back in laughter. Yes, that was a delicious victory indeed and he knew just what to do to celebrate. It had been a week, after all. He was positively parched.

.

He went to Canada for the hunt, and what a lovely hunt it had been, too. Quite amusing and even educational for Edward's part.

Edward liked to hear his prey scream first, if it was possible, though sometimes, of course, if it was in too crowded an area that option wasn't always feasible, but in the forests where no one else was around to hear, he was free to enjoy the terrified shouts of his two victims.

See, if he went about it too quickly, as he sometimes had to do, his food wasn't even aware they were in danger before he'd already clamped his jaws around their throat. But now he could take satisfaction in slowly stalking up to his prey, letting them know what was about to happen, and watch them panic. That wonderful dilation of the eyes, the delicious quickening of that heartbeat, the intoxicating smell of fear.

Times two.

There was a pair of human men, that actually thought themselves hunters. Edward observed them for a long while, watching them sit in their silly camouflage pants and shirts, as if that somehow concealed them in anyway. They sat in camp chairs, holding their rifles, and sipped beer from cans as they waited for prey to simply come up to them. Edward snorted at them as he descended upon them.

"Having those little contraptions that kill hardly makes you hunters," he remarked.

They gasped and turned to him. "Where did you come from?" one asked.

Edward grinned and shook his head making 'tsk'ing sounds. They definitely seemed more like prey to him.

"Tell me, what exactly are you hunting, this evening, gentlemen?"

The other man, less disturbed than his companion, replied easily. "White-tail deer. Tis the season," he said, and chuckled at his own lame joke that he had no doubt made countless times before.

"Right," replied Edward. "What are you going to do with it, _if _you manage to kill one?"

"We eat it, of course. No sense in killing it otherwise."

"So you aren't in it for the sport?" he asked, amused by the conversation.

"Well, of course we are. Otherwise we'd just do our grocery shopping the normal way. We've been hunting buddies for… what's it been Ned, 8 years?"

Ned was definitely the smarter of the two. Ned was properly afraid. Ned would be the first to die.

"I'll tell you something," Edward said. "There are three does and one buck, not a hundred yards south of here."

"Ah, I was wondering where you left your things. Not safe to leave your rifle unattended, buddy."

"Right… follow me."

It was slightly annoying, having to walk along the forest floor at such a drudging pace, but this might be worth it in the end. From behind, he heard the thoughts of the two men and couldn't help think how different they were. Ned, the clever mistrustful one, had his rifle carefully at the ready, not actually pointing at Edward, but ready to use if necessary. The other, Frank, as Edward gleaned from his mental eavesdropping, was only thinking about trying to get the buck for himself.

"Quietly!" Edward hissed. Stupid people would scare aware the beasts and wouldn't see his brilliant performance. The men moved more quietly, but also more slowly, causing Edward to roll his eyes. Finally when the bunch of deer were finally visible, he whispered again, "Now _this_ is hunting," and shot off after his non-human prey. He made sure to go slowly enough so that the humans could see his movements, but quickly enough so that the deer had no chance of escape. The tackle was easy, but the bite into the animals neck was appallingly furry and the blood that spurted out was a travesty of what he really wanted. All the while he listened in on the men's thoughts, and was pleased that they were blank with shock.

He quickly returned to them with the carcass, and flopped it down unceremoniously at their feet.

"Who's next?" he asked, wiping the blood away from his mouth and eying to two men hungrily.

Ned screamed and fired openly at him. Edward had never been shot before but was pleased to see that it did nothing but ruin his clothing. Of course, the bullets burned hot against his skin, but didn't damage his flesh at all.

'_Still undead!'_ he thought cheerfully after he inspected himself, and looked up, grinning at the two men. Ned threw the gun down and began to sprint away. _Cute_, Edward thought. Despite the fact that they had both just witnessed how fast he could go, he still thought to try to outrun him. Of course, fight or flight was human instinct. Since the fighting hadn't worked, he'd reverted to the other remaining option. Too bad for him flight wouldn't work either.

And yes, Ned was screaming when Edward finally made the bite, and was rewarded by that wonderful gurgling sound blood made as it was sucked out of the neck.

Frank was no hero. He left his friend and pelted away. Of course, Edward had time enough to drink dry Ned before coming after Frank. They had parked their car too far away to make any kind of escape. Edward could taste the alcohol in the second man's system and grimaced a bit. Beer. Not worth it. He simply ripped into the body to make it look like an animal attack, then returned to Ned, whom he shot in the neck with Frank's rifle, then threw the rifle back to its dead owner.

"Let the authorities solve _that_ one," he thought with amusement, and turned around to go home. He'd stop somewhere along the way, if only to get the nasty beer tinted blood taste out of his mouth. He wanted something pure, something clean. He thought of Bella and a fresh flow of venom filled his mouth.

"No," he shook his head forcefully, trying to push away that tantalizing image. "Not yet."

.

On his way back home he caught the scent of another vampire. Really, the area must be accumulating more of them, or so it seemed to Edward. This man's mind was so entirely focused on the hunt, it was a passion. Edward couldn't help but think how fun it would be to make the kill first, and deprive the man the object of his obsession. He still wanted something to cleanse his pallet, and the blood this vampire had in mind would surely do it.

The woman knew she was being hunted. Edward saw images of the vampire taunting her, telling her to try and run. He'd given her a day's head start. In his current location, Edward was in a perfect place to intercept her, being closer to the young woman now than his rival. James, Edward discovered with loathing, putting it down as coincidence.

He wouldn't have the advantage long; James was making some serious speed.

Edward had only just finished devouring her when James arrived, enraged that his prize had been taken from him. Edward was right, it had been amusing.

"She was mine!" James yelled angrily.

Edward shrugged. "How was I supposed to know that?" he asked.

James growled and looked like he would attack. Edward crouched defensively. "No need to get so worked up over it. She has a sister," he said with a smirk, and dashed off.

.

He relaxed on the roof of his apartment complex, looking out over the small town which shut down at ten o'clock in the evening, save the few bars which stayed open until two. Night time wasn't as bad as the day, though it was certainly more disconcerting if he tried to actively listen to dreaming minds, which he was currently doing. Fewer people were awake at this hour, and their conscious thoughts were louder. Sleeping minds were subtler, but stranger if he took the trouble to listen. It could prove amusing sometimes, though not always. Not tonight, for example.

Knowing that his fun for the day was over, Edward reluctantly went to work.

.

The following weeks proved that Jacob Black had stopped dogging him, but the same couldn't be said for his newly made enemy, James, who occasionally hovered on the outskirts of town. He'd even followed Edward out on a hunting trip or two, but hadn't done anything. Edward could read in his thoughts that he didn't intend on trying to take his food from him in retaliation, only learn more about him as a hunter, in hopes that one day he might be able to use that to his advantage against him.

That man could certainly hold a grudge. And for what? For one little human? Alright, she hadn't been that little. Rather shapely, as far as females went, but still, nothing to upset himself over. Granted, James had set his sights on her and he, Edward had robbed him of that goal. With great relish...

He grinned at the memory. If James wanted revenge he was more than welcome to come and get it, but he didn't, alas. It might have made things more interesting. While James wasn't as fast as he was, he had excellent senses. He'd never really had an all out fight with another vampire. It might prove interesting. Again, the thought that he might lose never crossed his mind. He imagined that was a common way of thinking, to someone who never died. One simply began to discount it as a possibility.

Although Edward wasn't one for sympathy, he could almost understand James' resentment towards him. If someone killed and ate Bella instead of him, he'd be furious. He might want some revenge.

Bella!

He'd actually almost forgotten about her in light of more pleasurable distractions. It had been about a month since he'd seen her. He wondered what she was doing to occupy herself and decided to call.

She didn't answer.

"Perhaps out with the pup?" he wondered aloud, but searching Jacob Black's mind he found that she wasn't with him. "Hmm."

Edward had resigned himself to yet another boring afternoon, which would no doubt turn into a boring evening and yet another boring night at work.

He began absentmindedly scanning through the familiar minds of the small town as was his habit that he couldn't seem to shake, no matter how hard he tried.

And then he saw her. Well, he didn't actually see her, but found her through the mind of someone else. Kevin, formerly of their biology class, as it so happened. Bella was back at work at a local grocery store. She no longer wore her sling. And he could tell that Kevin had gone out of his way to this particular store with the express purpose of seeing her, though of course, ostensibly doing a bit of shopping for his mother.

Edward was there before the pair's conversation even ended.

"Hello," he greeted, unwilling to call her Bella around other people. He didn't want it to catch on. Who knew what the fangirls would do with that development? He shuddered to think.

"Edward," she greeted, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"I suppose the usual is response is 'grocery shopping' but would be untrue in my case. Just came by for a visit, actually. Life's been dull."

She smiled at this, something Kevin didn't miss. _'Damn, I should have said that I came just for her.'_

"I got the brace off," she told him needlessly.

"I noticed. Congratulations. Did Jacob take you?"

She stiffened slightly. "Yes, he did. Edward, are you—? "

"No no. I've been good. Did he tell you yet?"

Bella frowned. "No, but—well… no. He hasn't even hinted at it."

Kevin slipped away, mentally grumbling that he had been completely ignored and shut out of the conversation. Bella hadn't even noticed. Edward decided to take this opportunity to drive a bigger wedge between her and 'her oldest friend in the world.'

"Perhaps he doesn't trust you," Edward suggested.

"But I'm his best friend! Shouldn't you be able to trust your best friend?"

"Considering his secret? Probably not. And considering how poorly you'd react, it's probably all for the better."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked angrily.

"You reacted badly when you learned mine."

"I didn't react badly!"

Edward raised his eyebrows. "Oh no? If my memory serves you said, and I quote, 'I'd rather take my chances with possible rapists,' than be with me. Even when I was trying to help you. That's not very understanding now is it? I think Jacob is right not to tell you."

She flinched, but he didn't give her time to do anything else because he added, "I shouldn't keep you from your work. I'll see you later," and left.

He couldn't read her thoughts, but he suspected, hoped, that this parting shot made her feel guilty, and that he had left because he was displeased with her. Of course he wasn't. He thought it was a miracle she didn't still hate him for that. Any normal person would, but Bella wasn't normal.

.

The phone rang. It was either his boss, or Mr. Sykes, who owned the building. They were the only ones who ever called.

"Hello?" he said unenthusiastically.

"I'm sorry!"

He frowned. "Bella?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry."

"Sorry?"

"You saved my life with the van thing, and yet when I found out your secret I didn't even try to understand. I just assumed the worst of you and treated you so horribly and I'm just… sorry. And I'm sorry for not having apologized sooner."

Ah, there was the Bella he first met. The one that was constantly either apologizing or saying thank you.

"Edward?"

He realized he hadn't said anything in response and that the silence had stretch an uncomfortable length. "Yes?"

"Say something."

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"Say that you forgive me."

"Alright I forgive you."

"Yes, but do you mean it?"

"Do I mean what?"

"Do you really forgive me?"

"Bella, you are being ridiculous."

"Do you?"

Edward rolled his eyes, not that she could have seen. "What do you think?"

"Well, you seem angry so…"

"That's because I get annoyed by stupid questions."

"What's a stupid question?" she asked.

"That one, for starters."

"_Edward…_" she whined, sounding as exasperated by the conversation as he was. "Do you or do you not—"

"Want to go to a movie?" he asked, cutting her off and hopefully distracting her from her inane line of questioning.

"Erm. Well I guess, but—"

"I'll pick you up in half an hour." With that he slammed the receiver down, almost breaking the phone. What a singularly annoying woman.

And to think he found her more tolerable than most.

A disparaging sex, nay, species, if _she_ were the best it had.

.

"I _refuse_ to take that travesty of a vehicle," Edward stated firmly, when she hopped in her truck and indicated he should do the same.

"I _refuse_ to let you drive like a madman all the way there," she replied, not getting out.

"Separate cars then?" he suggested.

"And waste gas?" she asked, scandalized.

"Then what do you suggest? We seem to be at an impasse."

"I don't know."

"I don't want to have to go through this every time we have to go somewhere, Bella," he said disapprovingly, crossing his arms across his chest and looking down at her, despite the fact that sitting in her truck she was higher up.

In the end, Bella drove the Volvo there. As they passed city limits, he felt James' presence. He was still sticking around town then. Edward hoped he didn't make any too public killings in the town, people would notice and he didn't want the suspicion to fall on him. Perhaps he ought to confront him.

Remembering the size and frightful disposition of the other vampire, he decided against it. He'd save that for a particularly boring day. He wasn't quite so desperate for distraction now as to search out a vampire who wanted to kill him. Yes, he could tell quite clearly that's what James wanted, vindictive thing that he was. Edward had a movie to see, and a Bella to irritate. That was distraction enough for now.

Trouble was, she was growing harder and harder to annoy. Yes, there were certain topics that could always get her going, like driving too quickly, but that felt like cheating. In the coming weeks he wondered why he was trying to constantly provoke Bella. The only reason he could come up with is that he liked being the one who transformed her from that sweet diminutive, thankful school girl, into the angry, sarcastic, fiery, spitting mad creature when her temper got the better of her. He liked her that way and wanted to convert her, if not to _his_ level of evil, at least in a malevolent direction.

But time proved this a difficult undertaking. She only acted that way with him, and only when provoked, which was becoming less and less frequent.

"I know what you are trying to do, Edward," she said not looking up from the book she was reading. They were in the woods near her house, and she, having decided she wanted a break from walking, had perched herself on a mossy boulder to read.

"What?"

"You're trying to goad me into an argument and I'm going to tell you right now it's not going to work. I will not be bated. Find something else to amuse yourself this time. I'm busy."

This would have put Edward in a foul mood for the rest of the afternoon, but the small drizzle chose that time to turn into a heavily rain, forcing Bella to put her book away and pay attention to him. She growled as she placed it carefully back into her purse and found him smirking when she looked up at him.

"Oh, shut up," she snapped.

"I didn't say anything," he said, smiling broadly.

"You were thinking it—" She didn't manage to say the last word, having been dazed by his bared teeth. Unconsciously, she retreated a step away from him, but tripped and fell over, distracting her from whatever thoughts his pointed teeth had inspired.

"Bella. Bella, you alright?" he asked, sounding the exemplar of concern.

"Ouch. Yes," she said, holding out her hand in a request to her up. Edward hesitated for a moment. Skin to skin contact was not good, his was too cold. They'd briefly touched before but this was quite different. She was bound to notice or say something eventually, if those sorts of things kept happening.

And yet, he couldn't just turn away and leave her on the ground. That would make her angry at him, and not in the good way.

Making a quick decision, he grabbed her beneath both arms (which had a layer or two of fabric to separate them, dimming the cold sensation) and hoisted her up to her feet.

"Thanks," she said, steadying herself by putting her hands on his shoulders. He quickly, almost too quickly, drew back. If he could feel the heat of her hands, she could feel the cold of his chest. Bella looked slightly hurt at his obvious dislike of being touched but that was simply too bad. He did not want her to get in the habit of touching him. She had to know that it wasn't okay.

It seemed as if she got the message.

Not wanting her to think he was pushing her away entirely, he asked again, "Are you sure you're alright?"

She merely continued to look at him quizzically, her hair being weighed down by the rain, making her look rather pathetic. Slowly, he approached, lifting her hood to protect her head from the rain. "Come on, let's go back inside," he said, putting his hands in his pockets and turning around.

He heard her following, so he didn't turn back.

.

"Hungry?" she asked him after she'd changed into something dry. It was the first thing she'd said to him since after he'd picked her up off the forest floor.

"No."

"Of course not. You're never hungry," she said, rolling her eyes.

Edward couldn't help but think that was decidedly untrue. Actually, he was ravenous. Watching her pull her hair into a ponytail and exposing her neck did bad things to his self control. He swallowed his salivating venom and clenched his fists, forcing himself to do nothing but watch. Watch as she filled a glass with water, tipped her head back and drank down the whole thing. He couldn't take his eyes off her throat; it bobbed with each swallow. He didn't realize he'd moved toward her, but all of a sudden there he stood, directly behind her, his hands gripping her shoulders so that she couldn't escape, lowering his mouth to her neck and taking a deep preparatory sniff. _Yes._ She even moved her head to the side to accommodate him. Such an obliging meal…

"Your hands; they're freezing," she whispered, startling Edward out of his trance. He pulled away.

She turned around and stepped forward and took one of his hands in both of hers, rubbing it, looking up at him with those big brown eyes, searching for something, asking for something.

She looked like she _wanted _to be eaten.

And oh, how he _wanted_ to eat her. He tongued his teeth, feeling their sharpness, imagining them piercing her skin. She closed her eyes and leaned in.

_Yes_. He could hear her heart beating rapidly, hear the blood coursing through her veins. Now. Why shouldn't he have her now? He'd lured her in, just like he'd planned. Made her trust him. Why shouldn't he take her now?

The same reason he never killed anyone in this small town. Because he didn't make a mess in his own nest. Because it was stupid and it would force him to leave a year earlier than planned, which was more hassle than this one girl was worth!

He shoved her away. He wouldn't let her ruin things by simply leaping into his arms with an exposed neck. There was some satisfaction in knowing that he'd completed his self-appointed task of getting her to trust him to that extent, but also frustration for being so weak as to almost let himself take her ahead of schedule. But, rather than get angry at himself for his weakness, he decided to get angry at her, for tempting him.

Scowling, he left. Not only did he leave her, her house, but left town all together. He drove East until he caught a decent scent and devoured him, taking the edge off his hunger and bad mood. Still, he didn't go back. He didn't have to work until Thursday; he could do whatever he wanted till then. Leaving his car in Montana, he continued on foot.

.

The first thing he did two days later as he returned home, was to check on the status of Mr. Vindictive. Edward's eyebrows shot up in outrage to find the bastard in his own apartment, waiting for him. The cheek!

'_He's back'_ thought James triumphantly. '_Wait till he gets here…' _James' senses were unparalleled, he could tell that Edward was already back in town just by scent alone.

Well, if ever there was an incentive not to go back to his home that was it. He scanned James' mind to find out what he was doing and found only Polaroid's, the images on them too blurred for Edward to see. James was using them to fan himself.

"Ooh, snapshots, how terrifying," he said to himself, rolling his eyes.

Edward was contemplating going home and showing James just what he thought of his invading his territory, when he heard someone call his name.

"_Edward!_"

He turned around for a moment trying to discern where that cry had come from before he realized he hadn't heard it with his ears, but in his mind. And yet they had called him directly. The only person who knew he could hear thoughts was Bella.

"_Edward! Oh god, can he even hear me? Is he too far or am I just not doing this right? Oh god… __**Edward!!**_" It was definitely her voice, and she definitely sounded panicked, like she was in trouble.

She must have taken down her mental barriers specifically to contact him. Not wasting another moment he jumped into her mind.

Yes. Yes, she was _definitely_ in trouble.

He pulled over and jumped out of his car, running as fast as he could. He would deal with James later… the bastard.


	9. The Recovery

_**Author's Note: **__This chapter is dedicated to my other half, Yang. (I'm Yin, you see.) You all might know him by the name Leon McFrenchington. Not only was he fabulous enough to beta this chapter but he also provides me with hours of amusement. Yang, you're my favourite!!!!!!!!_

_**Last time:**_

"_Edward!_"

He turned around for a moment trying to discern where that cry had come from before he realized he hadn't heard it with his ears, but in his mind. And yet they had called him directly.

The only person who knew he could hear thoughts was Bella.

"_Edward! Oh god, can he even hear me? Is he too far or am I just not doing this right? Oh god… __**Edward!!**_" It was definitely her voice, and she definitely sounded panicked, like she was in trouble.

She must have taken down her mental barriers specifically to contact him. Not wasting another moment he jumped into her mind.

Yes. Yes, she was _definitely_ in trouble.

He pulled over and jumped out of his car, running as fast as he could. He would deal with James later… the bastard.

_**Chapter Nine: **__The Recovery_

He hadn't been far from the school when he'd left his car. It had been a good thing as well, because inside he hadn't been able to smell her. Now that he was outside, he caught her scent, reassuringly nearby.

Edward continued to listen to Bella's thoughts. She'd been tied up and gagged, so she couldn't have called for help in the normal way. He really had been her only option.

Guided by her vague and frantic pleas and his own keen senses, he found the darkened supply cupboard in which she'd been put. He knew it had to be the one because there was a chair propped under the handle, preventing anyone on the inside from getting out.

He was going to let her out, but then he stopped.

_Think it through,_ he told himself. If he released her now, he still had to deal with James, waiting for him at his apartment. Not only that but he'd have to find a safe place to keep Bella while he killed the other vampire, without raising her suspicions that that was what he was doing. He'd also have to convince her not to go to the police while he was gone. On the other hand, if he went after James now, killed him, then went to retrieve Bella, there should be no problems. However, if he didn't come out victorious, then Bella would remained trapped in a closet and would doubtlessly be devoured by James later.

This image bothered him.

But even if he did free her first, if Edward lost, James could still easily track her down again and kill her.

Could he leave her with the wolf? That seemed the best option, though he wasn't exactly sure why. Still, the boy was stronger than humans, had better senses than humans. He'd be able to tell when danger was coming and take her away.

Yes, that was what he would do. Get Bella out now, take her to the wolf, go hunt down James, hopefully win, then…

Then he had to explain himself, which might be doable.

He could tell Bella that he was going to take her to Black, that she shouldn't say anything to him because he was going to go and try to scan for her abductor in the city, something they couldn't admit to her friend. That would work. And after he'd killed James he could come back and simply say he couldn't find him at all. He'd tell her the man must have left town, and that would be that.

That was the plan.

Or it had been the plan before James realized that Edward was already with Bella at the school.

Damn, that man had unfairly good senses. Already the other vampire was on his way.

Edward snarled and left the school to meet him. Thoughts of Bella left his mind completely, replaced by fey excitement at the impending encounter.

Staying securely in James' head, he also felt the other vampire's exhilaration. As he drew closer he felt a frisson of ecstasy. This was far more exciting than any normal hunt.

They met, perhaps fortunately, atop an abandoned construction sight. What was going to be a super shopping center had been abandoned, a year or so before, having been deemed unprofitable half-way into its development. The skeleton of the project remained however, and that was where Edward found him, standing on a naked steel beam waiting for him.

"After I kill you, I'm going to celebrate by eating her, you know. Your little pet human. I don't know if that's hilarious or just sad."

Edward was suddenly disappointed, realizing that this would be easier than he expected. Already he could hear what James was planning on doing. Edward was faster, dodging or escaping any attack the other vampire could come up with would be too simple. The only tricky bit was finding out just how, exactly, one killed a vampire.

He learned by experiment.

For example…

Ramming him into a wall of concrete with a steel beam did not work.

Naturally, pushing him off a three storey structure didn't work.

Pounding his face into the ground with his fist didn't work.

Pushing him out into the sunlight served only to increase James' temper, and while it might have helped, it too, didn't work.

When Edward started getting angry himself, his animal instinct took over and he bit at other the vampire's neck, tearing into it and eventually, with effort, ripped his head right off.

"Well then," said Edward aloud. "That's good to know."

Just in case, he ripped the rest of the carcass to pieces and scattered them about, burying them. It wasn't as if he was as superstitious as humans who read farcical fiction, but in this case, Edward decided to err on the side of caution. The head, however, he tossed into the sun to sizzle and fester. He could only grin, imaging the poor human who found it later. If there was any head left to find, that is.

"That's that then," he said complacently, dusting off himself. His clothes, he found did not come out of the encounter as well as he did.

Once he came fully out of his battle haze, he heard her again, weaker this time, but still persistently there. Chanting one thing over again.

"Edward, please hear me. Help. Edward. Please hear me. Please hear me."

_Oh right,_ he thought. He still had Bella to rescue.

"Well I can't get her looking like this," he said reasonably, and went back to his apartment to change. Another few minutes wouldn't hurt her.

He could hear her panicked thoughts as he approached. She thought his footsteps might have been those of her kidnapper, so he quickly put her mind at ease.

"Bella," he called through the door. "It's me, I'm going to get you out."

Moving the chair aside, he opened the door. Bella's face was pale white (even for her) with fear, but her eyes were filled with almost euphoric relief. '_Edward! Oh thank God. Thank _you,_'_ she thought at him.

Edward supposed he _was_ a god, in a way.

He acted as if he was just then responding to her call and didn't know about James, giving no indication that he'd encountered anyone else. He removed the gag, the blindfold and the rope that tied her hands behind her back.

"What happened?" he asked. Her mind was a blur of thankful relief.

"I don't know. I… I was going to work when someone grabbed me and… and locked me in here." She sounded hysterical. She _was _hysterical.

"Who?" he asked, though he knew perfectly well. He just needed to determine exactly how savvy _Bella_ was.

"I… I don't know." She was shaking, clinging to him, and now that he was there, crying. She hadn't been crying before, damnit, why did she turn on the waterworks only after he arrived? Crying with relief? What a bother.

"Did you get a good look at him? Could you describe him to the police?"

"No," she shook her head rapidly, perhaps as result of the trembling. "He... This is going to sound so stupid but he moved so fast I never..."

"Shh... it's okay." _Perfect actually, _but he doubted that would sound as assuring.

Bella gasped. "We have to get out of here! He could come back at any moment! Hurry Edward let's go to the police!"

"Hold on, let me listen."

She began pulling on his shirt. "_Please_, let's go."

"Shh Bella, shh." He pretended to listen for her mad attacker for a minute. "I don't hear him. There's nothing unusual out there."

Oh, but his acting skills were superb! He could make a career in theatre, he told himself. Who better? He was the consummate actor, the constant liar, and the ultimate pretender.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. He's long gone."

"But he said he'd come back and--" She abruptly cut off.

"And what?" He already knew, however. She had yet to close her mind again since reopening it to send out her distress signal.

"He said he'd come back and… have me." He saw the flash of memory in her mind.

Edward did _not_ laugh, but it was a near thing. He, of course, knew what James had meant when he said he'd have Bella, but the girl had obviously interpreted the threat a different way. And why shouldn't she? It wasn't as normal people would assume if they were kidnapped and locked away that their attacker planned to _eat_ them.

"Well he won't," said Edward, just about the only thing he could say.

"Come on, let's go to the police."

"And tell them what, exactly?" he asked, annoyed.

"Tell them what happened! That there's a dangerous person out there!"

"That you can't describe at all?"

"Doesn't matter, you have to report these things, no matter what."

Edward remembered that Bella's father had been chief of police. Of course his daughter would insist on involving them.

"They won't believe you."

"Why not?"

"How did you get out of that closet you were locked in?" he asked.

"You let me out," she said, bemused.

"And how did I know you there in the first place?"

"I… oh," she said, realization hit. "I could say that I called you."

"Even though you were bound, gagged, and don't even own a cell phone?"

She frowned, but was still shaking. _Damn, damn, damn. What do I do?_

Edward opened his mouth to tell her he could still hear her thoughts, but shut it again almost immediately. He helped her to her feet and they walked swiftly (for a human, anyway) out of the school and towards Edward's car.

He talked as they spoke. "If you can think of a reason, _any_ reason of why I knew how and where to find you, I'll take you to the station. But Bella, if you tell anyone about me, I will leave town and I would _not _thank you for that."

'_No!'_ she thought desperately. '_He can't leave._'

Interesting. It appeared that she was more attached to him than she let on. _Good._

"Alright. No police," she said. '_My father would be so disappointed in me._' "Just take me home."

.

Until then she was just revisiting the hours she spent locked away in the school's closet but as they drew near her house she began to panic again.

'_What if he knows where I live and comes back to get me?_'

And yet he couldn't tell her she didn't need to worry, because then he'd have to explain why. _Actually, my dear, I killed him, ripped off his head, toasted it, and buried the rest of the pieces. Now isn't that a comfort to know? Yes, I knew you would be pleased. No, no, please. No need to thank me._

Right…

He pulled into her driveway, or what passed for a driveway - it was more weeds than anything. He was waiting for her to disembark, but she seemed reluctant to do so. He could hear her inner struggle as she had not yet thought to block him out again.

"Stay with me," she said at last. She had finally decided to beg rather than brave her house alone. "I don't want to be by myself."

"You could ask your hairy friend to stay with you."

She didn't even question the hairy comment, an indicator of just how distracted with fear she was. "But--but…"

Edward nodded. "Alright, alright. I'll stay. If I hear him come anywhere near here, I'll tell you and we can leave."

"Oh thank you, Edward!" she said, and hugged him tightly. Edward stiffened, hoping that the contact would end sooner rather than later. Once again, she either didn't notice, or simply didn't comment on his coldness.

"Could you play the piano?" she asked timidly.

"With pleasure," he said. "I was just about to do that anyway." That way he wouldn't be troubled to converse with her or feel obliged to say comforting things. Truth was that he played piano rather well and comforted distraught young women rather poorly.

He'd let the music do the comforting.

.

He'd played just about all the Bach in his repertoire (not an inconsiderable amount, in other words) and stood, preparing himself to return to his apartment, all the while contemplating the purchase of a cello. It had been 25 years since he'd owned or played one. Plus, it was easier to move around to a new location than was a piano. After the afternoon he had a longing to get his hands on the instrument and play some preludes (Suite no. 1 in G major, to be precise). Plus, it would be a pleasant way to spend a class period come autumn. That was one lesson that never got dull. Despite his love of literature, English classes bored with repetition. Math hadn't changed in the century he'd been undead, and science was likewise simple and unchallenging. Music, however, only improved with repeat performances. Practice made perfect, and playing pieces to perfection was a true delight.

"You're going!?" Bella asked, startled from her drowsy Bach-induced sleep into a state of alarm.

"I had planned to, yes," he replied casually, putting his hands in his pockets.

Bella stood up quickly. "And leave me alone?"

"Quite alone," he said remorselessly, enjoying the look of panic in her eyes. He felt a familiar tingle at the sight. He thrived on that look. Except, strangely enough, he wasn't the one causing it. That might have been a first.

"Edward, please?"

"Please what? Please play guard dog? You've got someone better suited to the task than me. Black would be all too happy to sit on your porch with a shot-gun, I have no doubt."

She began to tremble visible with fear. "But he won't _know_ like you will. _Please_ Edward?"

He rolled his eyes. "I suppose I can stay for a while longer," he conceded.

.

She went upstairs to shower while he sat below, dutifully listening for a threat that had already been dealt with. Now that he could listen in on her thoughts again, he did so with even more attention than he ever had before. Now that he had been denied her mind, hearing it again was like a child sneaking sweets he knows he should not have. Knowing it would infuriate her made it all the more delicious, not that she would find out, if he had anything to say about it (which he did, of course).

Her mind, at that moment in time, was filled with bizarre and improbably silly scenarios about her attacker breaking in while she was in the shower, killing him and proceeding upstairs to finish her. _Someone has been reading too much gothic fiction_, Edward thought. Her imagination was far too active. Luckily for him, it wasn't active in a fantastical way. She didn't believe in things like vampires (all the better for him), only deranged and depraved human beings. And yet surprisingly, she accepted the fact that he could read minds. Quite the contradiction. Edward thought that eventually she'd find out the whole truth. Oddly, he was looking forward to it.

Bella continued to contemplate the possible actions of her deranged attacker. Well, being well acquainted with the human mind, Edward had to admit that deranged and depraved abounded. Their own music teacher was one such deviant.

His eavesdropping was interrupted when he heard another person's thoughts approaching.

'_Well, well, well, what do we have here?_' he thought.

Jacob Black was speeding towards the house on a sputtering motorized contraption that the less initiated might call a motorcycle.

Edward quickly learned what had the wereboy in a huff. He could smell Bella in town, could smell her fear. Edward could too, and rather liked the aroma, but apparently it had the unfortunate effect of bringing out the gallant side of Black.

Edward was waiting just behind the oak door when the bell rang. Bella heard the noise and started to panic, thinking her attacker had returned.

"I know you're there, Cullen. Let me in!" the big bad wolf demanded.

Edward snorted at the mental image.

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin," he replied.

"Very fuckin' funny. Now open the door."

"Shan't!" he practically sang. Aggravating Black was intensely satisfying for reasons he couldn't quite discern.

Upstairs the water turned off and Bella hastily donned some clothes. Black chose this moment to start pounding angrily at the door, which only caused Bella to panic even more.

Edward leapt up the stairs (no one was there to see him, after all) and said through the bathroom door, "It's your hot-headed mongrel friend. He wants in."

Relief spread throughout Bella's mind and she opened the door. She clutched the bathroom scale to her chest as if she had been planning to wield it, bashing it over her attackers head.

"Black is here."

"What does he want?"

"To get in, apparently."

"Why didn't you let him?"

"Not my place."

"You just like being mean to him."

Edward shrugged, unable to deny this.

"Jake," said Bella when she opened the door. "What are you doing here?"

This had been the part Edward had been waiting for. The mutt hadn't thought it through and the resulting awkwardness was delicious. Edward enjoyed every moment of the boy fumbling over his words as he tried to explain why he had arrived all in a hurry over an incident he shouldn't know anything about. He could hardly say, 'I smelt you were afraid and thought I'd come check on you…'

"I, uh… Well I had the feeling that... uh… I mean… I thought…" Black began to breathe hard, panicking. "He's not normal!" he shouted finally, pointing an accusing finger at Edward. "I don't know what he is, Bella, but he's unnatural and you shouldn't be around him. He's dangerous!"

"Nah ah ah!" said Edward smoothly, shaking a finger back and forth. "You don't get out of it that easily. As it so happens, Bella already knows of my defect. Sorry, pup."

Black turned his astounded gaze to Bella. "You know?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes, I know," she said calmly.

"Well then, what the hell is he?" Black demanded.

Bella swiveled her head to look at Edward. '_I can't tell Jake. It's not fair to use Edward's secret as a bargaining chip to learn Jake's. That's not fair.'_ She turned back to her friend. "That doesn't matter. The point is that I trust him and you have no right to barge in here throwing accusations around when you yourself don't even know the truth."

Only marginally and momentarily discomfited by shame, Jacob Black returned to the argument with predictable ineptitude. "He's still an ass-hole."

"Be that as it may," said Bella. Edward was slightly shocked. He couldn't deny the truth of the insult but he'd still thought Bella would defend him. She'd only acknowledged the point and moved on. "You, Jacob Black, have yet to explain why you came."

Black looked uneasy.

'_I can't deal with this today. It's too much. Too much, too much._'

Edward wasn't the only one who could hear Bella's heart pounding in her chest from stress. Black picked up on it too.

"I only came because I was worried for you, Bella. What happened to you?" He was looking directly at her, his eyes were bulging with combined anger and concern. Bella noticed this too.

"Your eyes are huge," she commented.

"All the better to see you with, I'd imagine," Edward couldn't help but remark wryly from the corner.

Black whipped around angrily, pointing a finger at him. "You shut the fuck up, Cullen. Stay out of this."

"Jake," she began, her eyes closed in fatigue. "Apart from being ridiculously tired, I'm fine. You can go back home."

"But--!"

"Look, if you aren't going to tell me how you even knew something was wrong, then you can just go. I'm tired of waiting around for you to trust me enough to tell me the truth."

"I… but… You honestly aren't going to let him stay with you alone? He… he might…"

Bella closed the door in Black's face. "I'm going back upstairs," she said shortly.

Edward, grinning broadly by this point, bade her a cheerful "have fun then," and waved her up the stairs.

'_Cullen: 2 Black: 0'_

However, he could hear that the mutt hadn't left, he was waiting outside. Waiting for him to come out, it seemed. Scanning his mind, Edward could see he wanted to talk, but the boy didn't even know what he wanted to talk about. He was confused.

Well, he might find some amusement in this, Edward thought, so he joined the young pup outside.

"You knew what I was but you didn't tell her? Why?" Jacob asked, as if out of everything, this was the most perplexing thing he'd heard that day.

Edward shrugged. "I wanted to," he admitted. "But she didn't want to know it if you didn't want to tell her. A girlish sentiment, but I humored her and kept it to myself."

"So she's been waiting all this time for me to tell her?"

"Yep. And you keep disappointing her again and again," said Edward happily. "Very amusing for me though. Thanks for that."

For once, Black didn't rise to his taunting.

"You think she'd accept me?"

"Well, it's not as if you ate her grandmother and stole her nightdress for yourself…"

"Will you stop that!?"

"Just one more, then I'll desist."

Black groaned. "Fine, get it out of your system."

"I can't do it _now_, I have to wait until the opportunity presents itself."

Jacob turned to stare at him evenly. "You know, you are _the_ most annoying person I've ever met."

"I assure you, the feeling is entirely mutual."

"And talk like a normal person, will you!"

"What, like _you_? Because you're so _normal_?"

Black pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes in frustration. "What the hell are you?" he whined.

Edward fluttered his eyelashes coquettishly. "I'm not the kind that tells."

"I hate you," he said dejectedly.

.

First thing they did after that was get Bella a cell phone. After the day's incident she suddenly saw the benefit of having one. She tried to convince Edward to purchase one as well but he was adamant.

It would just be another thing which tied him to a particular place and made him easier to find. He didn't need that or want a phone, so ruthlessly refused.

"But what if I need to call you?"

"Assuming that you ever detach yourself from my side after this?" he sneered disapprovingly. Bella looked down, and he listened to the stream of guilty thoughts that crossed her mind. Guilty, but desperate.

"You weren't there. You don't know what it was like," she said, sounding on the verge of tears. Yes, she had been bound and gagged and taken away and locked in a closet for hours under the apprehension of suffering 'a fate worse than death' but really, surely it wasn't _that_ bad. That was hours ago, she should be over it by now.

"I don't need a phone," he reiterated. "If you want to contact me, you know how," he said, tapping his index finger to her temple.

'_Oh_,' she thought. _'How did I open my mind to him? I was so panicked I don't remember. How did I clo… Wait!'_ Her head shot up and her eyes flashed angrily. Once again Edward was painfully evicted, so to speak, from her thoughts, and he flinched tellingly.

"You were eavesdropping again! How dare you! Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded.

"I assumed you knew. I thought you were keeping the connection open on purpose," Edward lied easily. "You're so paranoid, I figured you _wanted_ me in."

She huffed with indignation, which was now the only clue Edward had as to her thoughts. Her head was silent now. He didn't mind her being furious with him.

"So, since you're angry with me, is it safe to assume that you want me to go?" he asked hopefully. _Free to go, more like_, he thought.

Unfortunately, Edward wasn't as lucky as that. She maintained her temper, but still refused to leave his side. He found the dichotomy particularly annoying. Things improved, however, as her temper wore off and things returned to as normal as they could be, given the situation.

.

"Why have I never been to your place before?" she asked as they pulled into his apartment complex.

Edward shrugged. "I like my own space."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Bella quipped sarcastically.

"Yes, yes, very clever. But people force themselves inside my head whether I want them to or not. My personal space, however, is something I can control."

"Oh," she mused, considering the point. "That… makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it."

"Don't think about it too much," he warned, unlocking his door and opening it. "Will you step into my parlor?" he asked over-politely. He even gave her a mocking bow.

Bella must not have ever heard the story of the spider and the fly, for she entered without any second thoughts, merely a shy smile.

Apart from the sofa, electronic keyboard and bench, desk, and television, there was nothing in the room. Obviously the kitchen was completely bare. The bedroom didn't even have a bed, just stacks upon stacks of books.

"What are those? Pictures? Let me see," she said eagerly, walking toward a pile of scattered thin squares on the ground.

A flash of memory. James fanning himself with polaroids as he sat in this very room, waiting for Edward to return.

With inhuman speed he was in front of her, blocking her view of the photos. She gasped at his too sudden appearance, and he quickly tried to distract her. "Why don't you look in the backroom, pick out something you like."

"Huh?"

"Books, my dear. Hundreds of books." Actually it was probably wasn't _hundreds_, but he had to bait the hook well enough so the fish would bite.

And bite she did, hook, line, and sinker. He ushered her into the backroom and closed the door, then zipped back to the sitting room to inspect those polaroids.

They were pictures of Bella, bound and gagged. No doubt they were taken in order to taunt him.

Edward swore furiously in his head. Talk about damning evidence. He wouldn't be able to claim ignorance if those were ever seen. Those photos even seemed to scream compliance. Hell, it might even look as if he done the whole thing himself. That's how it would look if the police ever found out. Who else but her attacker could have known where she was? He wasted no time shredding them and burning the pieces. _Just like I did with dear Jamie boy_, Edward thought drily.

Lucky for him that Bella had announced her intention of looking at them before she did, instead of quietly stooping over to inspect one. How would he have explained _that_? Fortunately, that wasn't a problem, and the last of the evidence burned into smelly charred pieces on the stove.

_Finally useful for something_, he remarked. Naturally, he'd never used the appliance.

He'd never cooked a day in his existence. Even before he became a vampire he'd never attempted it. He'd been a pampered boy, with a doting mother and a plump cook who fed him. The closest thing Edward had ever come to preparing food was picking crabapples from the trees to fling at the other boys (or the school master) after lessons. That was such a vague and blurry memory, but he didn't think he imagined it.

"What's that smell?" Bella asked, sashaying from the room with a book in each hand.

"Burning polaroids," was his simple reply.

"You're burning the pictures? Why? I wanted to see them."

"I know."

"So why did you burn them?"

He turned to her and fixed her with a dead-even stare, quirking an eyebrow up. "A rhetorical question, I'm assuming."

She huffed and rolled her eyes. "Right, because you didn't want me to see them. I suppose you won't tell me why?"

"You suppose correctly."

"You know, for someone who has no regard for anyone's privacy, you certainly are particular about your own."

"Number one, I don't _disregard_ other people's privacy. As I've said time and time again, I have. No. Choice. Secondly, yes, I am particular about my privacy. You should be grateful I allowed you to come here at all."

That had the desired effect. Like most women, she liked to feel _special_.

.

Once again, he had to argue with Bella about leaving.

"I have work in the next town. Unless you'd like to take your pillow and sleep in the backseat of the Volvo all night, then you'll just have to…" Her eyes glistened pleadingly. "I don't believe it. You _actually_ want to sleep in the back of my car, don't you?"

She nodded.

Edward groaned. "Bella, just go home and go to sleep."

"But Edward, he's out there somewhere!"

"No he's not, I told you. I can't hear him anywhere."

"But what if he comes back when you're at work! You'd be so far away you wouldn't be able to hear him!" Her heart began to beat in true fear and her palms began to sweat. She smelled just like prey smelled before he devoured them. Edward licked his lips, trying to force that delicious vision from his mind. Too soon.

Reasonably, Edward could understand her sense of danger. Bella didn't know, as he did, that she was out of danger. How long until she would feel comfortable? Or would she be traumatized for the rest of her (admittedly short) life? (She only had a year to live, after all, before he planned to eat her.) Could he handle her clinginess for a year? He rather doubted it.

He'd have to see how long this fit of nerves lasted. If it turned out to be too much, or it took her too long to recover, he'd throw caution to the wind, eat her and bolt out of town ahead of schedule. He hated doing that though, it ruined his plan and 10 year cycle. It was right in the middle of a cycle, and if he left now he'd have to start again at the beginning of high school in a new place, instead of graduating and going ahead to college, which was always more interesting.

And so it was that Edward and Bella went back to her house. He had insisted they return so she could retrieve her own pillow and blanket. Bella had thought this was a sweet and sensitive gesture on his part, when in reality it was simply because he had no such provisions of his own to offer her. He certainly wouldn't have wasted the time and gas to go all the way back to her house if he had. Another reason he hurried her out of his apartment was that she mentioned the bathroom. Naturally, he didn't have toilet paper either, or food, or anything that she might need. They were, therefore, forced to return to hers.

.

"I still say you are being ridiculous," he said rather tartly as he stepped out of his car to go into work.

She merely grinned at him and snuggled into the little nest she'd made of his back seat.

He rolled his eyes and shut the door, locking her in.

.

The car was irresistibly fragrant when he returned to it at the end of his shift. Bella had done nothing but sit and breathe and sweat in its confined space for hours, filling it with her scent. He nearly drooled at the intensity of the odor as it washed over him when he opened the car door. Luckily it was summer and he had a perfectly legitimate reason for driving with the windows down.

.

Luckily, over the next two weeks Bella slowly began to relax. She didn't constantly need Edward at her side but she did ring his home phone, and when he wasn't there, left messages reminding him to scan about for the crazy kidnapper.

He didn't bother telling her that there were a _lot_ more than just one crazy kidnapper in the world. If she knew just how many dangerous people there were, she'd never leave him alone, and he couldn't have that. Let her think the world was better than it was. Most people did, even the pessimists.

He'd dropped by her place to borrow her piano. She'd been working on clearing out that old room all week, and he had gallantly declined to help, but came over all the same for 'moral support.' "Cleaning is a spectator sport," he'd claimed. She'd rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. She'd wander in and out as he played, carrying boxes or other odd bits of memorabilia up to the attic.

Her phone rang and she put down the box she was currently lifting and left the room to answer. He'd never heard her phone ring before and it was an unnatural, unwanted noise in this usually quiet and peaceful house. He wondered if he could convince Bella to trade homes. He rather doubted it, but it might be worth a try. He paused in his playing so he could better hear the conversation.

"Hello?"

"Iz! Hey, how're you?"

Edward recognized that voice, even through the earpiece. Kevin. He'd been in their biology class last year and frequently stopped by the store to see Bella.

"I'm good. What's up?"

"I was just wondering. A group of us is going camping for a few nights. Wanna come?"

"Camping?" she asked, uncertainty in her voice. "Um… sure, I guess."

"Cool!"

"When are we going?"

"We were thinking Thursday night until Sunday afternoon."

"I have work Thursday. I could meet up with you after, though. Where?"

"Same place as last time. Remember?"

"By the reservation, right?"

"Yeah. I could give you a ride, if you want."

"No no, that's cool. I have the truck."

"Alright. Awesome. I'll call you later with more details."

"Who else is going?" she asked.

"Everyone!" he replied happily. "'cept Kacey. She's on vacation with her family."

"Oh, alright. I guess I'll talk to you later."

"'Kay. Bye."

"Bye."

Edward shook his head and started playing again. Youths these days had atrocious speech patterns. It was all, 'um.. so… cool… awesome." Surprised though they may be to hear it, there were other positive adjectives in the English language.

Bella came downstairs, pushing the phone back into her pocket as she entered the room.

"Hey Edward, do you want to go--"

"No," he answered immediately.

"You don't even know what I was going to suggest."

"I know the answer is no," he replied, continuing to play unconcernedly.

"Edward, have you been reading my mind again?" she asked angrily.

"No. But I don't need to be a mind reader to know that I don't want to join you in whatever you've just been invited to by whoever just called you."

Bella sighed. "Doesn't misanthropy ever get tiring?"

Edward stopped playing for a moment, but didn't turn around. "No," he said, and before he started playing again, added, "Humanity does."

For a long time, she didn't say anything. In fact, he rather thought the subject was dropped until she stated, "That's really sad, you know. Being that bitter."

Indignant, he spun around on the piano bench to face her.

"Can you blame me for being this way? I wasn't born heartless, you know. This level of jadedness can only be achieved by too much truth. I have the unwanted truth foisted upon me all the time. You don't know what a curse it is. You try knowing what everyone around you truly thinks and _not _hate the world. Believe me, ma belle, ignorance _is _bliss and silence is the only truly beautiful thing in this world. And you are the only silence I have--"

He stopped suddenly, aware of what he had said and how she might take it. He hadn't meant to put it just that way, hadn't meant to imply she was beautiful to him. She wasn't.

Bella simply looked at him, not speaking, and that silence he had just been praising grew around them, amplifying. Her face might have been curious, or perhaps slightly pleased, or maybe it was displeasure he read there. He couldn't tell. The ambiguity was delicious, the awkwardness, the _not_ knowing... _for once._

So she wouldn't get the wrong impression from him he clarified. "You are the only person who can lie to me, and you don't know how wonderful that is."

"Lying isn't wonderful," she said with a confused scowl.

"Oh but it is. Go on, tell me something. Tell me something that may or may not be true."

She stared at him for a moment, considering, then rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. "Fine, alright." She took a moment to compose her thoughts, then began. "I read an article once. It said that the more attractive a man is, the more likely he is to cheat in a relationship."

"Interesting."

"Don't you want to know if it's true or not?"

He shook his head assuredly. "No. Not in a hundred years would I ever want to know the truth. About anything."

She eyed him skeptically. "A hundred years is a long time..."

"_It's not nearly so long as long as people say..._"

.

By unhappy chance, the mutt dropped by while Edward happened to be there. It was Thursday evening, and she'd just got off work. She'd come back to her house to pack and Edward was 'house sitting' while she was away. Bella had said she didn't mind if he wanted to stay there over the weekend, seeing as how she knew that he enjoyed the distance from humanity it provided.

"You didn't tell me _he_ was coming," Edward groused.

"He's here?" she asked.

"Not yet, but I can hear him coming. Right now he's thinking about the odd sound his car is making, and thinking he'll look under the hood when he gets here. And his ass itches."

"I didn't need to know that Edward. And yes, he's coming by for a bit to bring some of Charlie's old camping stuff he left with Billy."

"If you are camping near the reservation, why didn't you just stop there and pick it up before you went there?"

"He was in town today and is going to give me a ride there."

"Isn't that nice," he said flatly. "Here's the little gentleman now."

Bella hurried to the window and looked out and, seeing no one, turned to scowl at him. "No he's not."

He chuckled to himself. He still found it funny the following two other times he did it.

"Black's here!" he called toward the kitchen yet again. This time it was true. There was no response. Edward opened the door without Jacob even having to knock.

"Do come in," he said with false hospitality.

'_Jerk acts like he owns the place,'_ the were-mut thought.

Bella came strolling out of the kitchen, not even glancing their way as she made for her bedroom.

"Bella," Black greeted, somewhat annoyed at being blatantly ignored.

"Oh," she said, surprised to see him. "Edward said you were here but I didn't believe him."

"Yep. I've been crying wolf all evening," he said, grinning wickedly.

Jacob silently shot Edward a murderous look before turning to Bella. "All packed?

"Nearly. Give me a minute." With that she thundered up the stairs.

Edward held his breath in the dog's presence, as he seemed to reek more than usual. Catching sight of the boy, he soon learned why.

"Your shirt," Edward began. "Is that…?"

"Cotton!" Black said angrily. "Yes, it is. Go on, say it, a wolf in sheep's clothing!"

"Actually, I was going to say is that blood, but that's a good one! Rather ashamed I didn't think of it," said Edward, frowning.

He wasn't remotely tempted by this blood though. It seemed a perversion; the exact opposite of what blood _should_ be. Well, perhaps it's because it wasn't entirely _human_ blood. Edward had never eaten a non-human, but he had smelled them, certainly. Even real wolves and other wild animals didn't offend his olfactory senses the way Black did.

"So what happened?" he asked, pointing to the dark stain. "Farmer catch you lurking too close to his livestock?"

"Came off my bike this afternoon," said Black, ignoring Edward's latest barb and lifting up the bloody sleeve to inspect his arm. Surprisingly, it was unmarked. Were it not for the very real proof of the blood, one would have never known he'd injured himself. It was a marvel the shirt hadn't been torn, though he did notice it was rather dusty as well as stained. "I heal quickly," Black said smugly.

'_I don't even _need_ to heal because I'm indestructible_,' Edward wanted to say, but didn't. It wasn't fair that Black could brag when Edward couldn't one-up him.

"Good for you," he congratulated bitterly through clenched teeth. He didn't know why, but everything about the boy brought out the competitive side of him.

Bella came down a moment later with her bag.

"All set?" asked Black with a smile.

"Yep." She turned to Edward. "Enjoy yourself while I'm gone."

"With you gone, enjoying myself is almost guaranteed."

Black glowered at him for that, but Bella only snorted with laughter.

* * *

_Review? I know it's been a while but I hope you haven't all abandoned me._


	10. Revelations

_**Author's Note:**__ Yes, shame on me. It's been a long while. I'm afraid my time in Iraq has not been kind to my writing. But I'm leaving this weekend and will be back in the States for a month. Again, and always, this chappie is for my dear Yang._

**Chapter 10: **_Revelations_

_._

A weekend to himself.

Not just alone, but far enough away that he couldn't hear _anyone's _thoughts… apart from his own, that is.

Apparently silence lent itself to introspection. When he wasn't being bombarded by other people's thoughts he could more clearly hear his own. But given the time, he found he had nothing really to think about, other than himself, and he exhausted that topic rather quickly, being a shallow sort of creature by nature. Well educated, certainly, but he didn't run deep. His mind wandered, of course, to the one thing that drove him.

The feed.

It was the only real thing he cared about and when given the chance to think, that's where his thoughts gravitated. Every time he found himself undistracted by other people's thoughts, he'd been out in the wild, usually on his way to another town. His mind had been on food then as well, but up until this point Edward had assumed it was because that was usually his reason for travel, so naturally that's he thought about.

Now he knew the truth.

Edward had met a few vampires before, or rather, he'd been in their heads before, and he had always thought most of them a trifle… single-minded? Uncivilized? The exact word eluded him, but he'd always known he was a bit different. He knew that existing among humans was highly irregular. Yet he hadn't given much thought to it before.

Perhaps the reason he had better control of himself, why he could live among humans and not madly run wild on a feeding spree was because he was simply too distracted most of the time. The endless chatter of others, his fate as being a constant auditor of human thoughts gave him less opportunity to dwell on his own. He had an unwanted connection to humanity thrust upon him. It didn't give him any sympathy for his prey, but it distracted him, perhaps it even ruined his appetite.

Every time he'd been in a vampire's mind, he or she had _always_ been thinking about the hunt.

Not one of them played the piano.

He ate less than other vampires as well, so far as he could tell. He was driven solely by his hunger, when he felt parched and _needed_ to feed. He didn't kill if he wasn't hungry, and that too was unusual. The vampires he'd encountered were killing machines.

All because they had nothing else on their minds?

Just like Edward in Bella's house in the middle of the woods. He'd philosophized a bit about himself, but his thoughts kept straying back to blood; taking it, drinking it. It was wonderful stuff, really.

Too bad Bella wasn't there, she was a ripe bloodsack…

He swallowed a fresh the venom that flooded his mouth at the thought.

He couldn't stay still. Suddenly thirsty, Edward left for a midnight snack.

.

Edward forgot he'd even been intellectual or introspective as he raced through the forests. One scent would catch his fancy and he'd speed off in that direction, until something better wafted his way, and he'd follow that instead. His nose led him to a city, he didn't even know which one at this point, only that he'd caught a heavenly aroma, promising blood more delicious than any he'd ever tasted. He _had _to have it.

Of course, the closer into the town he got, the louder the burble in his brain became. People's thoughts crowded into his mind, but his own single determination was enough to block them out, focusing on just one. His quarry.

Oftentimes, Edward liked to play with his food before eating. Not this time though. His impatience drove out all notions of games or subtlety. In a blur, he grabbed her off the street where she had been walking with her friends to a taxi, and dragged her blood-filled body up the side of a building and onto the roof. Upon reaching a place away from prying eyes, he immediately sank his fangs into her throat. She'd been starting to cry out, so the air passing through her punctured throat made that delicious gurgling sound that sent a frisson of euphoria through him.

He groaned ecstatically as he swallowed mouthful after dripping mouthful of warm ambrosia.

.

He sucked her dry. Really dry. Her body was all puckered and yellow looking when he'd finished, and all he could do was roll over and sigh out of his unnecessary lungs. He didn't want to move. He wanted to bask in this moment for as long as he could…

Unfortunately that moment didn't last long enough as the high died down and people's thoughts once again intruded on his own. The girl's friends were panicking, the police had been called, people had seen a flash of something going off in a certain direction.

He couldn't stay.

Looking down proudly and the newly made corpse he said, chuckling, "Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Then he was off into the night.

.

Feeling tranquil and content, he made his way slowly (relatively speaking, of course) back to Bella's house. He was still dozens of miles off when he heard familiar voices. In his head, not actually within a distance that the sound could reach his ears.

Frowning, he realized he must be near Bella's little camping trip party with the other children. Several of the boys' heads were filled with thoughts of how they could arrange to put their sleeping bags next to Bella's without being too obvious, or…

And then there was _another _voice. Quite a different voice but surprisingly familiar.

He had raced him to a kill and won, but only just. Had spoken to the other vampire briefly. Now it seemed he had yet another target.

Edward growled to himself. If that scarred fellow came and tore into the campsite, it would wake up the suspicions of the people around. People would be talking about a monster, and the imaginations of those idiotic females who had read those even more idiotic books would begin making extremely annoying connections.

Quickly, Edward made to head the other guy off, which would be difficult as the other fellow had a significant lead already. Edward could see through the other man's thoughts the light of the campfire as he drew closer, and then thankfully slowed. The other vampire stood in the distance for a time, deciding on which he would pick off.

The selection verily made itself as one member of the group wandered foolishly off on her own.

Of course it _would_ be Bella.

.

This time Edward _did_ head him off. Just as the other one was descending upon a panic stricken Bella, Edward put himself between them, to the surprise of both the hunter and hunted.

"This one's mine," Edward told him.

The vampire frowned for a moment in concentration, before realization dawned.

"You again!" he said almost pleasantly.

"Indeed. But you can't have this one. I saw her first."

"You're pulling this feed impede bullshit on me _again_?"

Edward shrugged. "I saw her first."

At this point Bella must have gotten over the initial shock of almost being attacked and his own unexpected presence, because she began pulling on his sleeve. "Edward?" Bella sputtered, utterly confused. He ignored her.

Edward felt the other vampire's shock, looking between him and the girl. "You_ know_ it?" he asked incredulously. "But… but…" He pointed back and forth between them in confusion before he dropped his hand and through back his head laughing. "I don't believe it! This is rich. You actually… you _actually_…" He was overcome yet again by hearty laughter.

Edward began to feel a bit annoyed at this stranger's amusement. "Are you quite finished?" he asked disagreeably.

Recovering himself, the other man straightened and extended his hand. "Name's Jaz."

Clearly he expected Edward to shake it but Edward found himself less than keen.

"I understand it's your pet and all, but the fact of the matter is that I'm thirsty, and that you've already deprived me once. I think you owe me."

"Owe you?"

"Of course. It's the gentlemanly thing to do," Jaz replied confidently. "It's only a human, after all. Not like it'll last anyway. No point in keeping it unless it's for yourself, but even if that _is_ what you're doing, you owe me from taking my girl last time."

Out of the corner of his eye, Edward could see Bella shaking her head in disbelief. He had no idea how much sense she was making out of this. Hopefully not much.

A wide and toothy grin spread across Jaz's face. "I'll fight you for it," he suggested hopefully.

Jaz's mind was filled with various fights, which he seemed to enjoy. Edward could only describe the scarred vampire as battle drunk, or a battle addict. He loved fights as the many healed wounds on his body avowed.

Edward's expression soured. "Surely this isn't worth fighting over," he said.

"Exactly." Edward could see Jaz was planning how get around him and dive after Bella again.

"Oh for pity's sake," he muttered as he heard the approach of someone else. Or some_thing_, rather. A hairy, panting, snarling something.

Just as Jaz lunged, a massive wolf lept out from obscurity, intercepting the vampire before he could reach his target.

Jaz was so shocked that his mind, for a moment, was a complete blank. It took only a second for him to recover himself and fight back.

Edward watched in fascination as the two tussled. Jaz quickly decided he didn't like his chances and bolted. Black first made to go after him, before making the connection, finally realized that Edward must be a vampire as well, and lunged at him. Edward had no choice but to dodge will all the speed he possessed. He seemed to know, in that moment, that this beast, if nothing else, could kill him, which made Edward simultaneously attracted to it and afraid of it. So curious a creature. So fast. Fast as himself, if not faster.

He forgot all about Bella and trying to hide his abilities from her in his effort to escape the wolf.

But damn, the wolf _was_ fast! He felt its great paws press into his back as it tackled him to the ground. Edward turned over just in time to see slobbering jowls descending on him. He only had a moment to note just how awful the mutt's breath was before he grabbed both upper and lower jaws, stopping him from biting down on his throat.

_Bastard, that's __**my**__ job!_

He twisted to the right until the wolf was forced to turn his head, and eventually roll on his back so his neck wouldn't snap.

It took more effort than Edward was used to ever having to extend. He was sure that if he could if he'd had working glands, he'd be sweating profusely.

"Fuck," he ground out, kicking the beast in the stomach. This distracted the animal long enough for Edward to fling himself into the nearest tree, climbing it with all haste to the topmost of its boughs.

Black spent some time on his hind legs, his paws the furthest up the trunk he could reach, snapping and snarling at Edward, out of reach.

"Fuck you, Black! Why don't you face me like a man?"

It took only a second for him to change back into a human… a completely naked human. "Why don't you come down here and '_face me like a man_' if you can be called that."

"Pot and kettle, Black. Pot and kettle."

"What… the… _HELL!_" yelled Bella. "I mean, what the hell! What the hell is going on here?"

_Oh that's right. Bella's here._

Black's thoughts were of a similar vein.

Edward leaped from the tree and darted behind the girl. Yes, he was using Bella as a human shield, and he was okay with that. At any moment Black could transform into that beast at any moment and take him out.

"You get away from her!" shouted Black.

"No," said Edward, putting his hands on her shoulders and standing as close behind her as he could. "I don't think I will. You did, after all, just try to kill me for no reason."

Bella gasped at this, as if she'd just now realized the truth for herself. However shocked she might have been at seeing her two friends do unnatural things, upon hearing this news she put her arms out, one of them reaching around to hold him protectively behind her. She was shivering, but out of fear or coldness of touching him he didn't know.

When Black advanced, Bella and Edward retreated together, their steps somehow perfectly synchronized.

"Okay. I don't know what or who either of you are anymore, but there will be _NO_ killing, is that clear?" It would have been a fine speech if her voice hadn't been shaky with uncertainty. "I mean it!" she added, stronger this time.

Edward could read Jacob's mind in time to determine what his response would be, and formulated his own first to make himself sound better.

"Of course I won't kill anyone." He'd gotten his killing in earlier in the evening.

"But Bella! He's... he's a monster!"

"Stop it, just stop it! I can't…" She couldn't process all this information no doubt, as most of it went against her reason. "You turn into a wolf, tried to kill Edward and that other guy, and you say _he's_ the monster?" she asked. She'd started to giggle nervously, as if trying to convince herself that all of this was just some joke.

"You might have made a better first impression if you hadn't started out by viciously attacking people. I'd have gone with the loveable puppy approach myself. Providing I could transform into a big hairy wolf, of course," added Edward.

"No, Bella, that's not what happened! Well, it is but…"

"I'm leaving." This statement was so final. "I'm going back to the campsite and go to sleep in the hopes that I can wake up and all this has been a dream were Edward's superhuman and you are a wolf-thing… and naked." She shook her head and averted her eyes. "It's either that or just finally admit I've gone completely crazy."

Edward groaned at how dramatic everything had quickly become. The whole shameful scene could come directly from that disgusting book. The dialogue and dramatics were just th sort of things those appalling characters would have done.

"I'll walk you back," he offered genteelly. If there was ever a time to try to be on Bella's good side, it was now.

"Don't go with him!" the mutt cried predictably.

Bella paused, considering Black's advice. She turned to Edward, searching his face.

"Yes, there's more to me than you know. But you are safe with me." _For now…_

She nodded then turned to Black. "He did try to protect me from…" She faltered here, trying to find a suitable description for Jaz. It was clear that even now, she wasn't aware that either of them were vampires. If she had, she'd probably be less trusting.

"Go back to your friends, finish your camping trip. When you come back I'll answer all the questions you have. Does that sound alright?" he asked quietly, gently. Edward was sure the comparison to Black's frantic shouting was to his favour.

Bella nodded mutely, leaning into him.

Smirking, he started leading her back to her friends. The brilliant part of the whole thing was that she _should_ trust Black. Black loved her, wanted to protect her, while _he_ just wanted to eat her, just as Black feared. Black was completely in the right and yet the fates favoured Edward. Bella didn't trust her best friend and embraced her future-killer.

Irony. Delicious irony.

Perhaps his conceited farewell to Black was poor planning, but he simply couldn't resist taunting the pup. "Now would be the time to run off with your tail between your legs."

It wasn't a conscious effort, because Edward would have heard it in Black's mind if he'd decided to transform. Rather it seemed that his temper _forced_ him to change.

Well that was nice to know. I would certainly make him think twice before goading him again.

"Looks like he's going to try and kill me after all," Edward remarked aloud. "I'll talk to you later if he doesn't get me."

And with that, Edward ran for his… well _life_ wasn't exactly the appropriate word, was it?

.

As far as eventful nights went, Edward would have to rank that one high on the list. He guessed he was just about an equal match to the mutt, though he hated to admit it. He'd only managed to shake him off at the Canadian border, where Edward had distracted him by leading the wolf to _another_ vampire to kill. This one was actually in the middle of hunting a human.

Edward didn't know the vampire and didn't care.

He made his way back to Bella's house, where he fully intended to stay until she returned. Until that time, he contemplated his new problem. Black. So long as they lived in the same area, and kept crossing paths because of Bella, there would be these little contretemps. It might have been a rush the first time or two, but Edward didn't doubt that constantly worrying about being eaten would soon grow tiresome. If the boy/beast couldn't be persuaded to lay off then he would have to be killed. Which presented another problem: killing Black might prove more difficult than previously anticipated.

Well, the boy had to sleep _sometime_. Edward's best bet was getting to the creature while it was unconscious and in human form. It would take much more stealth than it he would ever need with a human, but he thought he might manage it. Edward still had the advantage that he could read Black's mind. The double advantage, actually, as the boy didn't yet _know_ that he could read his mind.

.

Bella entered her house warily, pushing the door open inch by inch and poking her head through. "Edward?"

"Yes, dear?" he replied from the doorway to the sitting room. He intended to thoroughly lay on the charm.

She gasped, startled.

"I… didn't know if you'd be here," she said awkwardly, closing and locking the door behind her.

"I said I would be," he reminded her.

"Yes, but that was before Jake tried to…" She shook her head. "I still can't believe this."

"Well, as you can see, he did me no harm… though not for want of trying."

"I haven't answered his calls, or listened to his voice mails, or read his texts. I can't… I don't know what to think. I wanted to see you first… That is, if you were…" She gulped, as if something were caught in her throat.

"Alive?" he provided helpfully.

She let out as shuddering sigh before nodding. "Yeah. I wanted to go to the police but…"

"I can see how that would be problematic, yes. They'd laugh you out of the station or put you in a psych ward."

"Perhaps I _belong_ in a psych ward." There was a pause where she seemed to be considering everything. "You were…" she blinked rapidly. "So fast. Like… impossibly fast. And impossibly strong. Way too strong."

"Yes."

"And you don't ever eat. I've never seen you eat. And you don't sleep."

"And I'm rather cold?" he suggested.

"Yes, and you're always cold."

"Well, I promised to answer your questions… so let's hear them."

She walked into the sitting room, and Edward followed. "I've done nothing but think about this the last two days. I've considered lots of things, you just don't make sense.

"What have you considered?"

"Kryponite?"

"Nope."

"Radioactive spiders?"

"Certainly not."

"Is there a picture of you in an attic somewhere getting older and uglier?"

He actually laughed at this. Of course she'd use literary references. "Getting warmer, but no, I'm no Dorian Gray."

"Ever trapped a man named Jonathon Harker in your castle in Transylvania?"

He smiled at her, not evilly, but proudly, as a teacher might when a student has worked out a difficult problem by herself.

She swallowed. "Oh my god." There was a long silence before she spoke again. "Is it too much to hope for to think that if you had wanted to eat me you would have done it already?"

_ Oh, what a loaded question. To lie or not to lie?_ "I don't hunt in my own backyard. It would complicate things," he said in a tone of voice that was both patronizing and soothing at the same time. _Well saved, Edward,_ he congratulated himself.

"Oh." He wished he could read her mind now more than ever. Did she believe him? He certainly wouldn't if he were in her position, but then again, he knew what vampires were really like. But she didn't know, so perhaps there was hope after all. All things considered, Bella seemedto take the fact that he ate people it rather well.

She fainted.

Or perhaps not...

.

Edward thought it best to give her a bit more time with _this_ revelation, and didn't see her until the first day back at school. Black hadn't been hounding him, so that boded well. Perhaps Bella had finally talked to Black and they'd come to some arrangement. He wouldn't know for certain until he asked.

Considering his surprisingly eventful summer, the return to school was even harder to face than it had been in past years. For decades his life had been rather monotonous. He'd never cultivated any relationships with anyone, had never found pleasure in anything but the hunt. Now that he had, it made the mind-numbing boredom of classes, the repetitive unchanging drama of high-school students, and the

There was one thing that could be said, being in closer proximity to humans was less torturous. He could more easily control his desire to feed, no doubt from the practice of constantly being around Bella, and resisting the urge to kill her. If he could resist Bella, no one else at the school would pose too onerous a challenge to him. None of the new freshmen smelled especially delicious. There would be no problems.

He first saw with his _own_ eyes period three English. Of course he'd seen her through other people's minds long before that. The general consensus was that she looked a bit sickly and pale, with which Edward had to agree.

They didn't speak at all during class; didn't even sit near one another. He took his usual seat in the back of the class and, predictably, some girl rushed in and took the seat next to him, trying to make conversation. His answers were short and not inviting to continue any dialogue, but she pressed determinately on. He tried desperately to tune out both her inner and outer chattering with only partial success.

The bell rang and it was obvious, obvious to Edward anyway, that Bella rushed from the room, avoiding eye contact.

He sat outside during lunch, as was his old habit before he met Bella, and read. He was instantly aware that it was she who had opened the door by her scent, but he chose to continue reading and let her approach.

When she did, she took a deep breath as in preparation. No doubt she'd been thinking very carefully about what to say.

"Alright, call me crazy but—"

"You're crazy," he returned immediately, not looking up from his book. "But," he added in faithfully, as he calmly he turned a page. Turns out it was the end of the chapter. "Have you read this?" he asked, holding the book out so she could see the title. She looked at it then shook her head to indicate she hadn't, then stepped back angrily and shook her head more forcefully.

"Don't talk to me all normal as if nothing has changed."

"For me, nothing _has_ changed. Only _your_ perceptions have altered, Bell."

She shook her head in confusion. "What?"

"It's simple. To me, you are still the same Bella I always put up with. To you, however, I'm a completely different Edward. The change is all on your side. I have nothing new to get used to. But please, do go on. You were saying? Call you crazy but…"

"I'm... not afraid of you."

He tilted his head. "Really?" He could hear her rapid pulse, detect a bit of perspiration, but he couldn't tell if he had been the cause, or if was simply nervousness about having this conversation. "You don't think I'm a horrible monster?"

"No, I do," she corrected him promptly, without her usual apologetic remorse. "I'm just not afraid of you. You _have_ saved my life three times already, so—"

"Four."

"What?"

"I've saved your life four times now."

She frowned, and counted on her fingers. "Those guys with guns in the alley, that guy who locked me up in the closet, and that guy during the camping trip."

"Mr. Mathews. Remember? The incident that started it all? You were nearly run down in the parking lot and I pushed you out of the way… which I wouldn't have been able to do if I weren't unnaturally fast, by the way."

"Oh, right. Well, you've saved my life _four_ times already so I've decided to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"Oh? You're not going to insult me and declare you'd rather spend your time with rapists instead?"

"Okay, I know I reacted badly last time, and that's actually part of the reason I'm giving you another chance this time."

"Because you owe me." It was half a question.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, that's good of you."

An awkward silence stretched.

"It bothers you that I eat people," he said at last.

"Of course it bothers me!" she shouted, as if this was really what she'd wanted to do the whole time. "I mean, how can you stand the sight of yourself?"

"Don't have to. That's one of the perks of my kind. No reflection, so we don't have to worry about standing by the sight of ourselves," he said casually.

Bella's eyes widened and she plopped down on the bench. "Oh my god. That's actually true? You don't have a reflection?"

"No indeed."

"How have I never noticed that before?"

"You're simply unobservant."

"Do you sleep in a coffin?"

"You _know _that's not true. I don't sleep at all."

"Right. What happens when you go into the sun?"

"I sure as hell don't _sparkle_," he spat.

"Sparkle?" she asked, confused.

"It's nothing," he said bitterly.

"Then what? I know you never go out in the sun," she persisted.

His eyes narrowed at her. Edward swallowed hard. Just thinking about being in the sun made his throat feel dry and achy. "Painful," he said slowly. "Incredibly. Painful."

"Having to have an invitation before entering a house."

"I go wherever I like, and nothing can stop me."

She frowned. "Creepy, but alright. Oh! Can you turn into a bat?"

It was his turn to frown. _A bat? _"No." Really, some of those ideas were just ludicrous.

"Garlic."

"Ineffective."

"Crucifix?"

"Useless."

"Stake to the heart?"

It was quiet for a moment or two before he said strongly, "No."

The truth was, he had no idea if it would kill him or not, not having ever been staked before. Nor was he aware of any other means of ending his existence, other than perhaps the wolf or another vampire. Up until that point, everything had failed, demonstrably, as he was still undead. Still, telling people they couldn't kill him with a stake might stop them from trying.

"Are you… immortal?" she asked in a whisper.

He looked at her, locking eyes for a moment.

"Yes," he replied evenly.

"How… how old are you?"

"17."

"How long have you _been_ 17?"

He shrugged, unconcerned. "A while," he replied flippantly.

"How long is a while?"

His brows drew together in calculation. "I don't really remember my life before I was changed. Nor do I remember my early years as a vampire. But I've been this way for about a century I'd guess."

Bella's mouth dropped. He reached over and closed it for her. Now that she knew what he was he didn't have to worry her feeling his coldness.

She eventually recovered herself. "And that man at the campsite. Was he a…" It took a bit to work up to saying the actual word. "Vampire?"

"Yes, he was. I'd met him once before."

"And he was going to eat me?"

"Yes."

"But you stopped him."

"That is correct. And what's more the man who kidnapped you and trapped you in a closet was also a vampire, and he too was going to eat you."

"Oh my god, how many are out there?" she asked in alarm, nervously looking around for one such 'vampire' to pop out of the nearby flowerbed.

"I don't know. Not too many in these parts. You just have bad luck, so far as I can tell."

"_Bad Luck Bella_," she sighed.

"Indeed."

It was quiet for another moment before she interrupted the silence. "So…"

"So…?"

"You haven't eaten me."

"I haven't eaten a lot of people," he remarked.

"I bet you _have_ eaten a lot of people after 100 years," she said disapprovingly, as if she were chiding him for some bad habit, like smoking, or spitting in public. "And the thing is, you're pretty much immune to the law."

"I know. Hardy fair, right?"

"It's not fair at all! Can't you… stop? I mean it's wrong!"

"No, I can't stop eating any more than you can. And how is it wrong? People kill to survive too. You eat meat."

"_Animal_ meat, Edward. We don't kill people!"

He laughed openly at this. "Of course people kill people, people just don't _eat_ people. At least I'm killing for food."

"But you're killing _people_!" she reiterated. "People only kill animals for food.

He rolled his eyes. "Let's get one thing straight. To my kind, you _are_ animals. That's all you are to us. Prey. Food. The same way you'd look at any cow, pig, chicken, tuna, whatever. Just food."

"But… but you don't…"

He knew what argument she was going to make so he made his rebuttal to save himself the pain of waiting until she stammered it all out.

"If you could hear the thoughts of your hamburger, you'd probably think twice about calling it a mere animal too," he said flatly. He'd love to turn off his inner hearing for that very reason.

"You mean, not all vampires can read minds?"

"No, that's just me, alas. Others don't have to worry about listening to what their dinner is thinking as he's killing it."

Bella covered her mouth with her hand, as if she were about to be sick. "Oh my god. Oh—oh my god…"

"What?"

"I don't think I can do this, Edward."

"Do what?"

"I can't be with you. I can't be around you. You… you kill people. You're a monster."

"I _eat_ people. I'm hardly a mass murderer. I'm not some socio—" He was about to say _sociopath_, but realized it would be untrue to say he wasn't, so he changed it to "Psychopath that goes on random killing sprees."

"But do you have to _kill _them? I mean, can't you just, take their blood and let them live?"

"If I don't kill them then they turn into vampires themselves, and we wouldn't want that, would we?" he asked with a vicious smirk.

"No, we definitely don't," she stated disgustedly.

'_If I were a feeling human, that would have hurt my feelings,_' Edward thought with amusement. As it was, he was hard pressed not to burst out laughing at the thought.

He managed to contain his mirth, and instead said seriously,"I hunt for my food to survive, just like all predators. I can't help what I am. I certainly didn't choose this life."

He got up from the table.

"Next time you eat a steak, I want you to think about how all the other cows believe _you_ are a monster."

With that, he left for his next class.

Of course, he couldn't expect a human to condone the killing of other humans. He hadn't really expected it to work anyway, he just wanted to try it for the fun, for the challenge, to see if he could do it. Apparently not.

A spark lit within him. It grew into a happy flame. Getting her to trust him _now_ would be the ultimate conquest. He would trick the lamb into trusting the lion. How brilliant would he be to bring that off? What a splendid victory! What an extraordinary triumph! Imagine the look in her eyes when he told her moments before the deed that he was going to eat her.

He swallowed a mouthful of venom at the thought.

_ You haven't seen the last of me, ma Belle. This is where the _real_ game begins._


	11. Warmth and Realizations

_**Author's Note: **__ It's been over a year since I've posted. I was writing this story for someone, my Yang (Leon McFrenchington) to whom I dedicated several chapters. My enthusiasm for this story went when he did. Recently, however, I was rereading some of the conversations we'd had a long time ago and decided to pick it up again. I'd like to think this chapter would amuse him, as it's not my usual style. _

_This story was meant to be more drawn out, but I think I'll try to wrap it up quickly. Needless to say, this is the chapter that flips the story entirely and things start coming to a head. Edward is forced into some realizations and so is Bella._

_For Yang, as always. _

**Chapter 11: Warmth and Realizations**

Having gorged himself, Edward lay down and exhaled, happy, groggy, and content. This blood-high made him almost unaware of his surroundings, so sated, heavy, and warm with fresh blood that he wanted to do nothing but close his eyes and enjoy it. He supposed it was the closest he'd ever come to sleeping, that warm, blood induced drowsiness. It was the best thing in his existence, and it's what every one of his kind existed for. He easily understood why other vampires hunted when they didn't need to, when they weren't hungry. It was for the sheer pleasure of being transported…

It probably wasn't coincidence that he never felt more alive than when stealing the life blood from someone else. That pulsing red liquid that sustained life, both humans' and theirs… it's all that really mattered.

.

It had been a month, and she still hadn't spoken to him. He had opened doors for her, pulled out chairs for her, left books he thought she'd enjoy in her locker, but she continued to studiously ignore him, even in music lesson and there were only four others in the room with them.

He'd never been unhappy before. Bored, certainly, jaded, absolutely. But he'd never been _un_happy. But in the month following Bella turning from him, he found that he was in a near constant bad mood. He didn't like it at all. He found that he had even less patience with his classmates, teachers, his boss, anyone with whom he was forced to interact. It seemed that everyone wanted to talk to him except the one person he actually wanted to speak to.

She'd taken to having lunch in the cafeteria with everyone else, rather than outside where they used to sit. It was one of her many (effective) avoidance tactics. But he'd had enough now.

Gritting his teeth, he approached her, despite being surrounded by the hoard of others. He futilely tried to block out their thoughts as he stopped at their table.

"B—" He'd almost said _Bella_ but stopped himself at the last moment. Since he couldn't bring himself to call her _Iz_ he didn't directly address her at all, but everyone knew to whom he was speaking.

"Can we talk?" he asked, and although his voice was pitched low, everyone else had abandoned their own conversations to listen.

"What?" she asked flatly, not moving from her seat. To his surprise, her voice continued inside his head, louder and more direct than all the others. '_Leave me alone, Edward. I don't want to talk._'

"It's been a while…" he replied, all the while he could hear the thoughts of those sitting around her. _She's so full of herself, thinks she's too good for Edward? Please, __**she**__ doesn't deserve __**him**__. Bitch. _"Can we go outside?"

"I'm eating lunch with my friends," she countered.

He squatted down next to her, so they were on a level. He leaned to whisper in her ear, and she stiffened in alarm.

_He wouldn't… not in public. You're safe, Bella_, she told herself, perhaps forgetting, or simply uncaring that he could hear her.

"_These are not your friends,_" he whispered. _"If you could only hear what they are thinking about you right now you'd know… They don't actually care about you, Bella."_

_And __**you**__ do? _The accusation was forceful, but she didn't expect an answer. _I can't believe I actually liked you._

"_Everyone likes me,"_ he whispered. Looking around the table everyone was watching, though tried to pretend they weren't. "_It's one of the reasons nobody likes __**you**__…_"

_They wouldn't like you if they knew what you really were,_ she challenged, and Edward couldn't help but smile. No, bizarrely enough the thought of him being a vampire was _exactly_ the reason they all loved him… Granted, their idea of him was entirely spurious and their silly notions were based from a sillier book, but the fact remained.

"Let's find out, shall we?" he asked, not bothering to lower his voice this time.

Standing, he addressed the table. "Ladies, may I ask you a question? If I were say… a lonely vampire…"

'_What the hell are you doing!'_

He ignored her.

"And I'd befriended you, you and only you, and _never_ ate you despite…" No, best not admit to desperately wanting to devour her. "Despite being what I am, what would you do? Would you abandon me if you learned the truth about what I really was?"

The chorus of replies was exactly what he expected, insistences that they would never abandon him, proclaiming how romantic it would be, how special they would feel.

Bella looked at them as if they were all mad, then turned to Edward, clearly wondering how he had managed to brainwash them all.

_Not I, ma belle, you have Meyer to thank for that_, he thought. _Turning a generation of girls into willing fodder for predators and abusers._

She shook her head in disgust and disbelief and stood to go from the room, opening her mind long enough to shoot out, _Don't follow me, Edward._

Ignoring this, he went after her.

"Will you at least—" he began but she cut him off.

"No. I don't know what sort of Dracula jedi mind tricks you used on them but stop. I won't let you use them on me anymore either," she said angrily, refusing to meet his eyes.

"I'm not Dracula. I don't turn into a bat, I don't sleep in a coffin and I can't do mind tricks!"

"You can read people's thoughts, Edward. If that's not a mind trick, what is? And who knows what else you can do. You've done nothing but lie to me from the start."

"I only concealed the truth from you because I knew how you'd react! I didn't lie. I _can't_ manipulate people's minds."

She wheeled around to face him but stared at his chest, rather than his face. "Bullshit! I saw what happened in there, Edward!" she said, pointing furiously to the cafeteria. "They are all enthralled by you for no reason! You duped them just like you duped me! You _made_ me care for you, you… you bastard!"

"How many times do I have to tell you I can't enthrall people! That's just lore from a book!"

"How can I believe anything you say?" she demanded hotly.

"Because, if I _could_ control your feelings you wouldn't hate me right now!" he yelled.

"I…" Her breathing was quick and faulting. "I…" She shook her head. "God, just leave me alone, Edward."

She ran away from him, but this time he didn't bother going after her.

The moment he stopped focusing so hard on what he was doing, the press of thoughts from hundreds of students invaded his mind again. Their classmates assumed that he and Bella, or '_Iz_' in their minds, had had a fight. Edward considered it a difference of opinion rather than an actual _fight_. He snorted at the very notion. It wouldn't be much of a fight if he decided to take her on. It would be over in a moment.

_There's an idea_, he thought with sudden epiphany. To be reminded of the fact that he was good enough _not_ to fight her might do his darling Bella some good. If she was going to consider him a monster unworthy of her company, then she would fear him as she would a monster. Just a small fright, just to let her know how lucky she was indeed that he'd let her live. Some gratitude was all he wanted. Hearing her scream would be a reward for his good behavior.

.

He waited for her in the woods that surrounded her house. It wouldn't do to attempt this sort of thing at the school; she might scream. He _hoped_ she would, anyway.

Her rusting, red, rattling contraption pulled up and Bella got out, shielding her face from the slight rain with her hood. Edward pounced on her with less finesse than he usually did with his _actual_ victims. He was brutish this time, knocking her down and pinning her to the muddy ground, growling at her with teeth bared.

She _did _scream. Somehow it wasn't the rewarding experience he'd imagined it would be. He found he couldn't bear it and covered her mouth with his hand.

"No one is going to hear you," he told her, and it was then he saw comprehension dawn on her face. Up until that moment she hadn't known who her attacker actually was.

Bella stopped struggling, stopped fighting. Her eyes, which had been wide with fear, closed. When they opened again they were full of tears.

Her heart was pounding, and Edward couldn't stop himself. His hand slid away from her mouth to her neck to feel the pulse throbbing there. His other hand, which had been holding her shoulder down, snaked its way to her chest to feel her heart, hammering away against his palm.

_Mercy…_ Edward pleaded mentally. So warm, so redolent. So… so desperately edible… he wanted, no, _needed_ a taste. The venom was pooling in his mouth, and while he'd had better smelling meals before, he could honestly say he'd never before wanted anyone so badly in his 'life'.

"Edward," she whispered. _"Please…_"

Her words penetrated through his hunger numbed brain but he didn't stop what he was doing.

"Please what?" he asked, dipping his head down to her neck, breathing in her scent. The contact warmed the tip of his nose. He never noticed that he was cold until he touched a living thing, as he did then. The entire heat of her body under his promised an even headier heat once all that precious hot blood was flowing through _him_ instead of her. All that warmth would be his. For a little while, anyway.

"_Don't kill me."_

It would start in a gush to fill his mouth. He'd swallow it down and it would fill him, then start circulating. And for several minutes he'd be too blood drunk to care about anything but the high.

"_Edward_…"

The blood would soon cool though, and the heady feeling would be gone. He realised at that moment why vampires were addicted to hunting people. It was this glorious warmth. He reveled in it, buried the side of his face into her burning neck. He was openly drooling, now, the venom flowed into his mouth but he didn't swallow it. It wasn't warm enough. He wanted blood.

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked, his hands roaming everywhere there was warm skin. It wasn't as pleasant through layers of fabric, so his greedy hand burrowed beneath. Her stomach was the warmest yet. Despite the fact that she was wet and shivering from fear and cold her body still maintained that glorious body temperature. Unfortunately, her skin cooled if he lingered in any one place for too long, so he had to change locations. The more his body that absorbed her warmth, the more aware he became that the rest of him was still unbearably cold. His flanks, especially, and his feet, the further most extremity and trapped in layers of socks and shoes. There was no way to warm himself all at once but to eat her. Then he'd be perfectly happy.

"_Please_…."

He thought about crunching into her throat, but didn't do it, imagining it would be too painful for her. He could slice the inside of her wrist, quick and almost painless, and just let her slowly drain into him. But then her body would get cold and would lose its pleasantness beneath him.

_Her body would get cold…_

'_Yes, she would die, but what does it matter if she does? She's ignored me for a month, not a word, or a gesture. I'm dead to her, so why shouldn't she be dead to me?'_ he thought bitterly.

"Give me one… good… reason…" he said, pleaded, rather, even as he moved her hair aside and went to nosing her under her ear. He _needed_ a reason not to do this. Any reason would do. He wanted to eat her, but did not want her dead. The realization jarred, jammed his thought processes like a stick in a wheel spoke. "You are just this sad little thing. You're all by yourself, Bella. Depressed and alone. No more friends," He changed to nuzzle the other side. "No family. You have no one…"

"I had _you_, you bastard!" she shouted, shoving him as hard as she could in the chest. She wasn't strong enough to push him off but he lifted himself away from her all the same, enough to see her face. "I had you until you became this… this _thing_ I'm disgusted to look at!"

"I didn't just _become_ this thing, Bella. I've _been_ this thing since the first time you met me! And for a century before that! Every time you laughed at something I said, I was this thing. When I pushed you out of the way of a sliding van, I was this thing. I was this thing when someone locked you up in a school closet, and I was this thing when I came and saved you. I was only able to save _because_ I was this thing. I was this thing when I spent hours playing on your piano, and I was this thing when you were so afraid to be by yourself I let you sleep in my car. All the time we've spent together, I've been this thing."

"I'm just a cow to you! That's what you said! That I'm just an animal in your eyes! I'm just a meal… a… a…"

"Not _you_!" he cried.

_**Yes**__ you. Right here. Right now. _

_Damnit, _he wanted to eat her, but also wanted to keep her. Not until this moment did he truly understand the phrase 'you cannot have your cake and eat it too.'

Like a flash of light so unexpected and bright that one is momentarily blinded, she opened her mind to him. Accidentally or on purpose he didn't know, but he staggered at the sudden onslaught of thought.

It was a phantasmagoria of fear, image after image, thought after thought, nightmare after screaming nightmare played through her head with one single theme. He, Edward, lashing out and attacking people, as he was doing to her now. Of him, pretending to be her friend to lure her away and kill her. Of him, killing other people and returning to her, covered in gore and kissing her with bloody lips. Also he saw plans of her leaving, of trying to hide, of living in constant fear of those like him. Fear that she would never be safe again. Most overwhelming was her desire to run away and hide forever. These had been her thoughts this last month. Her greatest wish was to never see him again.

No.

"_Don't leave me_," he said at last, surprising himself and no doubt Bella too. He lowered himself back onto her, placing the side of his face on her chest, wrapping his arms under her so they'd be warmed by her back. It was wonderful. He wouldn't kill her so long as he got to lie on her, absorb her warmth through touch alone, like a reptile on sun-baked rock. "Before, you said that you weren't afraid of me. You were going to give me a chance, once. You said you cared."

He knew his behavior was pitiful, embarrassing even. Had he known before that he was going to make a sniveling fool of himself he wouldn't have come at all. But he hadn't known, hadn't suspected that he'd wanted her alive. Well, he'd come here with the intention of frightening her into being his friend again, but it turned out pretty poorly. He was pathetic, and he knew it. He also knew that if she rejected him now he _would_ eat her. What had started out as a mere threat had turned into the only option. He'd take whatever he could get.

"I had more time to think about what you really are…" She was shivering violently but he didn't care. "Why would I want to be your friend? Why would I want to spend time with a killer?" she asked through clattering teeth.

"Because," he answered, turning his head to warm his other cheek on her other breast. "_I_ will never die on you."

For a time it was silent between them, even her mind seemed to go quiet, it was as if she'd gone into shock.

Then a gasp, a cough, and she burst into tears, her chest heaving with sobs. He rolled off to the side, still clutching her to him, only this time, she clutched back.

"I will never kill myself." A vision of her mother's suicide pressed into her mind and perforce into his. "I will never die in a car accident." Screeching tires and shattering glass. "I will never get sick or hurt." Bella in a hospital bed, hooked up to drips and machines, feeling helpless and alone. "You never have to fear being left on your own ever again. I can give you a forever that actually _means _something…"

.

.

.

Bella got sick, unsurprisingly, as she'd been caught out in the rain with a cold dead thing leaching the warmth from her. It was already night by the time they'd peeled themselves apart and off the ground. Her clothes were thoroughly muddied, her bag had kept some of her things dry, but alas, the rain had seeped in and destroyed pages of notes and books, and Bella herself looked as miserable as it was possible to look. Hair wet and matted, face as pale as his, save her nose which turned a bright red once she went inside.

Edward was cold again, and it was as if his sense had returned to him. What the hell had he been thinking? What had he done?

He started a fire in the grate while she took a bath. He couldn't feel its heat, though he put his hand directly on top a burning log. The flames did nothing to him, brought him no warmth and no pain, just a prickling tickling sensation, the same as if he let insects crawl all over his hand. He withdrew his hand and leaned back, lying out across the floor.

He mentally reached out to her but she'd closed her mind again and he hadn't a clue as to what she was thinking.

Finally he heard to water drain from the tub upstairs and he stood, waiting for her to descend.

She finally did, taking the stairs slowly, putting both feet on the same step before lowering herself to the next one. She was bundled up in a furry blanket, and she was sniffling. From crying or a cold he didn't know. Probably both.

"I'm sorry," he said, before she had the opportunity to speak. "I didn't mean for _any_ of this to happen." Which was entirely true. Everything had gone wrong. All his plans… "I wish…"

"What?" she asked. First thing she'd said since calling him a killer. Her voice was raw and thin sounding.

"I wish I'd never met you," he confessed. Even as he spoke he cursed himself for wanting to be wrapped around her as snuggly as that blanket. He might very well get addicted to body heat. He didn't _feel_ cold now, but knew that he was. How was it that he'd never learned that before? Well, any time he'd been close enough to a human body he was eating them. He'd never held onto a person for any other reason. He didn't know how wonderful it could be.

She nodded in what Edward assumed was full understanding. He could well imagine her being happier never having known him.

"Too late now," she commented quietly in that still hoarse voice.

_Too true._

"You should…" she began, then paused. Edward waited for what it would be. Leave her house? Leave town? He was considering doing that, the former, at any rate. One girl, so long as she was alive, wasn't worth the hassle of picking up and relocating. He only did that when he slipped up and killed one. Which had very nearly happened. Might yet happen...

He was contemplating on the annoyance of packing up and forging new papers when she said "Play something."

Edward frowned. "Beg your pardon?"

"You should play something," she repeated. "On the piano."

_Oh_. That… well, that hadn't been what he'd expected to hear at all, and at the suggestion he promptly forget every tune in his repertoire. "Er… any requests?"

She shook her head, then belied the gesture by saying, "Maybe Beethoven or Debussy?"

And so Edward went into the other room, sat himself on the piano bench, and started off with Moonlight Sonata, followed by Clair de Lune…

.

.

Things went back to the way they had been the year before. Silence between them, but spending a lot of time together. It was strained but talking would only make it worse. Another difference was that he couldn't seem to stop touching her. He never allowed contact with people before because they'd feel how cold he was, but Bella knew, and he wasn't strong enough to deny himself the pleasure of her warmth.

He'd changed his seats in the three classes he shared with Bella to sit beside her, grabbing her hand when she didn't need it, or placing his on the back of her neck.

Edward had to suffer the disgust of his classmates' thoughts at this development. And indeed, not everyone felt the need to keep these remarks to themselves.

"Get a room!" shouted a freshman boy, earning him chuckles from his group of friends. No doubt they all thought the remark exceptionally clever.

'_They are all over each other!'_ girls would think bitterly, but this wasn't true. Bella never touched him, more's the pity. He wouldn't mind having her warm hands cover his nose, cheeks, her fingertips on his eyelids, or to feel her palms on _his_ neck. He liked it most when he sat behind her, her entire back pressed to his front, and he could lower his chin to rest on her shoulder, warming his chest, his neck, and the side of his face against hers.

They looked like a romantic couple to the untrained eye, but anyone who bothered to look would notice that Bella never smiled, never leaned into his touch. She simply tolerated it in silence, and tried not to shudder from the cold.

Entire days would pass when they wouldn't speak a word.

.

One reconciliation seemed to pave the way for another. She was friends with Black again.

Bella never insisted they meet and shake hands, only that they stop trying to kill one another.

Both had agreed grudgingly.

The main drawback was that she would often (oftener than he would like, anyway) _smell_ of the dog.

He'd been at her piano one evening when she returned home from work, reeking of _homo lupis_. Edward had determined that would be Black's genus and species.

"Don't stop," she said from the door, her first words to him all day. She carried a brown bag on to the kitchen, and he resumed playing.

She came in a few minutes later at sat to listen. Edward couldn't stop his lip curling, nose wrinkling, but he did manage to stop himself from commenting. They had so few words for each other, it would be a pity to waste them on such a distasteful subject.

When he crawled under the covers to latch on to her at bedtime however, he couldn't stop himself.

"Aren't you going to take a shower?" he asked hopefully.

"In the morning," she said, putting her back to him and clutching a pillow to her chest.

"But you smell like that dog," he admitted at last.

She sat up, looking alarmed.

He didn't know why she was acting so surprised. "He must have slobbered all over you," he said. The odour was overpowering enough.

Bella's hand flew to her lips, eyes wide. It was then he noticed bruising on three of her knuckles.

"How did—have you been reading Jacob's mind?" she asked, narrowing her eyes in accusation.

"Why would I want to spend any of my time playing voyeur to that mutt?" He shuddered. He was hard pressed to think of something he'd like _less_.

"Then how did you know?"

"Because the boy reeks, that's how. I can always tell when you've been around him. And what have you done to yourself this time?" he asked, pointing to her injured hand.

She blinked. "I… I punched him."

They sat there, staring at one another for a moment before he threw his head back and laughed. "Brava!" he cried. "I heartily approve. Though you might want to leave the beating business to me in the future. Noble as your efforts were, you seem to have damaged yourself."

He picked up a hand to inspect it. "That one might actually be broken," he commented. "I'll wrap them for you after your shower." A not so subtle hint, that.

She still stared confusedly at him.

"You don't want to know _why_ I punched him?" she asked, slightly disappointed if he judged her aright.

He shrugged, not having given the matter much thought. "One doesn't _need_ a reason to hit Black."

Taking her healthy hand, he pulled her from the bed and led her to the bathroom.

Still chuckling, he said, "Go. Deodorize yourself." Edward went for the first aid kit, sitting on the bed waiting for his heater to return. It had been the new routine. On nights when he didn't work he'd stay at Bella's. She hadn't said anything the first time he'd followed her to bed nor the several times after. The only comment she'd made was to complain of the cold when he tried to warm his feet against hers. There had been moments when he thought he'd been so warm that he might even have dozed, but he couldn't be sure.

.

"You didn't wash your hair," he pointed out the moment she returned.

"It's not good for it," she replied.

"But it still smells like _him_."

"Well if you don't like it you should leave!" she spat with sudden rancor.

He frowned at her outburst and thrust the first aid kit at her. She'd have a hard time bandaging with her left hand but didn't care.

"See you tomorrow then." Spending the night with her head against the pillow would get rid of the smell by morning anyway. He still cursed that he wouldn't be warm on his night off, but if she refused then she refused.

He made for the door.

"You don't care at all that he kissed me, do you?" she called after him. "You're just offended by the smell!"

He stopped and pinned her with a glare. He didn't know that Black _had_ kissed her. "His entire existence offends me. If I had any say in your affairs, you wouldn't see him at all let alone kiss him. But it's not up to me, and I should think you're allowed to smell how you like and kiss who you want," he said, and then mentally corrected himself, _whom_. Though that didn't sound right, somehow. _Whomever_? He was battling with this grammatical quibble when his lips began to tingle pleasantly warm.

She pulled away after only a moment, just a fraction of an inch, taking the heat with her. But he could still feel her breath. And her hands.

She was touching him willingly for the first time, her hands, one on his cheek the other on his neck, felt so wonderful.

The tingle her kiss had left soon drained from his lips and they went cold and numb again. She remained temptingly close, however; that warmth would be easily captured again. He put his forehead to hers; the heat that spread felt like the sudden dissolution of a headache he didn't even know he'd been having.

"Do it again," he whispered.

She obliged almost at once, rubbing life back into his mouth. His nose benefited too, as it rubbed along hers and against her cheek. He moaned in delight at her hands, traveling around like he'd always wished they would. Her tongue, warmest thing he'd yet felt, swept across his lips. He decided he liked her tongue immensely, opening his mouth to capture it. What he wouldn't do to bite the thing right off, so wet and warm. Like blood.

He started venomating and his teeth began to elongate.


End file.
